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WHAT IS ENGLISH? 



SOMETHING DEFINITE FOR TEACHERS 



BY 

C. H. WARD, M.A. 

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, THE TAFT SCHOOL, 
WATKRTOWN, CONNECTICUT 



SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
CHICAGO NEW YORK 






Copyright 1917 
By Scott, Foresman and Company 



JAN 29 1917 



•CI.A453834 



To 

ALBERT SHAW 

"Who once taught me the most valuable lesson an 
English teacher can learn 



■•' • 



PEEFACE 

Many of the ideas in this book have been elabo- 
rated as special articles, but the chapters are in no 
sense a set of reprinted essays. Thanks are due to 
the following journals for permission to adapt or 
use parts of what they published : 

The English Journal 

Intensive Spelling, Oct., 1914 

Punctator Gingriens, Sep., 1915 

We, Must Not Be Enemies, Feb., 1916 

The Bottomless Pond of ties, March, 1916 

The Scale Illusion, Feb., 1917 

Education 

English Apparatus, Nov., 1915 

Educational Review 

What Is English? Feb., 1916 

The English Leaflet 

Inculcated Love, Feb., 1915 
Defending Camelot, Oct., 1916 

The School Review 

A Platform of Grammar, April, 1916 

Bulletin of the Illinois Association 
Exploring the Comma, Nov., 1916 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/whatisenglishsomOOward 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 5 

Introduction 9 

Chapter I. Wha t English Is 15 

II. Descent to Earth 29 

III. Intensive Spelling 36 

IV. "What Grammar Is All About 74 

V. Teaching Grammar 96 

VI. John Wilson !s Idea 115 

VII. What Is a Comma? 128 

VIII. Present Usage in Pointing 154 

IX. Themes 1S9 

X. Reading 219 

XI. Odds and Ends 244 



INTRODUCTION 

A paraphrase of the Advertisement to The Vicar 
of Wakefield will serve to introduce this book. "A 
hundred doubts may be stirred by this manual, and 
a hundred things could be said to prove them ground- 
less. But it is needless. A book may be useful with 
numerous over-statements, or it may be erroneous 
without a single emphatic remark. Such as' are fond 
of pulpit-banging will turn with disdain from the 
author's simple work-shop. Such as mistake suave 
wording for sound teaching will find no help in this 
kit of tools for a laborer, and such as have been 
taught to deride accuracy will laugh at one whose 
whole stock of advice is drawn from the facts of a 
long experience. " 

English has until recently been considered above 
and beyond other subjects of the curriculum. Its 
function has been supposed to be the cultivation 
of insight into beauty, of charm and finesse in 
expression. Teachers have taken pride in the 
idea that their beautiful occupation had little ' to 
do with imparting facts to crassly ignorant minds; 
have felt little need of accurate knowledge or careful 
scheme of attack. Algebra, Latin, physics — these 
required a teacher to have definite information and 
to go about his instruction according to plans worked 
out through centuries of experience. But English — 
that demanded only hazy desire and the throb of 
inspiration. A large proportion of its teachers, in 
J?oth school and college, have been dilettanteish, 



10 INTRODUCTION 

amateurish, ignorant of fact, and scornful of system. 
They have professed horror at the notion that the 
main purpose of secondary English is to attack 
methodically the most rudimentary illiteracy. They 
have felt that such a proposal could come only from 
a mental blacksmith, and have thus made the me- 
chanics of their art an almost unmentionable subject. 
But they have not denied the necessity of the gross 
mechanics, and in practice have done much good 
work. 

Such a jumble of emotion and fact perplexes the 
novice. And there is another potent cause of per- 
plexity — the experts in pedagogy. They occupy 
lofty positions, they thunder in conventions, they 
appal us with articles and books. Though they know 
nothing of the craft of teaching English, they tell 
us of noble aims: "Why instead of confining our 
students to English literature do we not make them 
acquainted with the first-class literature of man- 
kind?" This from a prominent man in our oldest 
university. An even better-known man has written 
"authoritatively" about spelling. The only par- 
ticles of information in his brochure are wrong in 
principle; there is hardly a sentence that presents 
anything concrete; the adjurations are mostly im- 
possible to follow. Lest such violent language should 
seem the impertinence of a small man toward great 
ones, the reader is referred to an article in the Un- 
popular Review for July, 1916, "The Professor of 
Pedagogy Once More," written by a man who "for 
twenty years in several institutions has been next- 
door neighbor" to professors of pedagogy, and who 
"has on his shelves seventeen feet of pedagogic lit- 
erature." This article is not savage or vindictive 



INTRODUCTION 11 

or satirical; it rather good-naturedly states such 
facts as these : ' ' Among the secondary school-teach- 
ers, of course, the professor of pedagogy is an oracle 
and a great man. And it is the secondary school to 
which, almost exclusively, he addresses his litera- 
ture. . . . Few college professors would be so 
naive as to discuss their methods with a pedagogical 
expert. . . . He knows, too, that only a sort of 
professional courtesy prevents them from frankly 
calling him a humbug. . . . His whole 'line of 
talk' reveals that he has never considered the ques- 
tion of dealing with responsible minds. . . . 
Their praises of the delights of literature and art 
have a curious way of suggesting, by the vagueness 
and generality of the terms, that these delights are 
being reported, rather than recalled from personal 
experience. ... In the teacher of experience, 
who takes the pedagogical courses as a condition of 
promotion, they excite only ridicule and contempt." 
Where can the novice look for counsel? He knows 
not what his objective is, nor what to do, nor how to 
do it, nor how to correlate the demands for litera- 
ture and written composition and oral composition 
and spelling and grammar and "appreciation" and 
clear thinking and self-expression and sentence- 
structure and analysis of style — and so on, world 
without end. Inexperienced teachers perform one 
third of the English work in the high schools of the 
author's state, and probably that ratio holds for 
the rest of the country. They cannot rely on their 
texts for guidance as teachers of algebra can; and 
so rapidly have methods changed, that they may get 
only misdirection by recalling how they themselves 
were taught when they were in school. So there is a 



12 INTRODUCTION 

real use for a vade mecum which shall display what 
one man has observed, what he has found essential, 
how he drives at that objective, and what devices 
he has learned to employ. Such a guide may be wide 
of the truth in some particulars ; not all of it can be 
used by any one reader. But it is a coherent body 
of practice which is available until a teacher has had 
time to build up a codex of his own. Everything 
here presented is the result of experience — an ex- 
perience based on acquaintance with the product of 
many schools in all parts of the country. Every one 
of the suggestions has been tested for at least five 
years and most of them for twelve ; some for eighteen. 
Hardly anything has been arrived at by experiment- 
ing with a preconception ; everything has been forced 
upon the author by observing what was effective 
with particular young human beings who sat on 
material benches in an actual class-room. 

For the most part a colloquial style has been used. 
The author has thought it better to say "I" and 
"you" and "don't" and "tackle," because he is a 
practical workman who fears formality when he is 
talking about his trade. 

After this volume was ready for the press the 
author read Eollo Walter Brown's How the French 
Boy Learns to Write. Mr. Brown's inquiries were 
scrupulously and fully made; the results are care- 
fully compiled and temperately expressed. Here is 
an epitome of the judgment of the world 's most clear- 
sighted, most literary nation on the teaching of its 
mother-tongue. It appears that the French boy, 
"not superior in intellect to the American boy, and 
not aided by some sort of magic in his native lan- 
guage, writes with sharper accuracy of thought, 



INTRODUCTION 13 

surer and more intelligent freedom." Yet France 
' ' does not believe that the great body of boys should 
be trained in any special graces, has no idea of mak- 
ing a great body of literary writers. " l 'In the early 
grades the matters to receive chief attention are 
ordinary accuracy and conventional correctness.' ' 
Simplified grammar, especially "the functions of 
words in ordinary sentences," is carried purpose- 
fully through the whole school course ; teachers take 
the position that a boy's ability to express himself 
well "must eventually depend in large measure upon 
his skill in handling the sentence, and that this skill 
must come in part from deep-seated, long-established 
knowledge of sentence elements." France requires 
that every pupil in its secondaire schools "shall have 
his attention called to punctuation" from his eighth 
to his tenth years and shall be taught ' ' the principles 
of punctuation ' ' during the next two years. The suc- 
cess of these efforts may be gaged by one of Mr. 
Brown's experiments. A class of 28 French boys 
(aged 11 and 12) wrote from dictation a paragraph 
of English (64 words) which they had never seen 
before; 11 wrote without error. When the same 
paragraph was tried in American schools with 500 
pupils of the same or higher grades, only 11 wrote 
without error — i. e., the younger French pupils were 
18 times better. This is hardly so astonishing as a 
bit of evidence that the present writer can adduce : a 
set of twelve-minute themes, written at Cambrai for 
an American teacher of English at the lycee, mere 
class tests for idiom written by fourteen-year-old 
boys, written for a teacher who never had a word to 
say about punctuation — these show only two petty 
instances of carelessness with commas. France hag 



14 INTRODUCTION 

achieved in the schools, by the only possible method 
— patient and unrelenting care with fundamentals — 
what our best universities agonize over and can only 
partially attain. Anyone who is skeptical about the 
wisdom of What is English? will do well to read How 
the French Boy Learns to Write. 

The most astonishing portion of this message from 
France is the answer to the question: "What is the 
objective in all teaching of the mother-tongue 1 ' ' Our 
American answer has been that there is a double ob- 
jective : 1. (minor) some graces of style, 2. (major) 
stimulating a taste for good literature. But France 
says : ' ' It is the conviction of the great body of teach- 
ers, as well as the Ministry, that work in grammar, 
rhetoric, and literature is in most respects lost unless 
it contributes to the pupil's ability to give full, intel- 
ligent expression to his thought. Moreover, theories 
of teaching, and all the proposed changes in the 
course of study seem to be considered first in respect 
to their influence on this ability of the pupil. Ex- 
pression is not the sole end, but in all the lower 
schools it is the primary end." 

The voice of France speaks there. A voice is now 
being heard from American universities (see pages 
17-22) that issues the same mandate to secondary 
teachers. It declares that originality without literacy 
is valueless. These voices must be heeded by one 
who would avoid failure. But the following of their 
counsel is a complicated task. It is the aim of this 
book to supply the knowledge necessary to success. 



CHAPTER I 



WHAT ENGLISH IS 



No inexperienced teacher needs to be told what 
algebra is, or Latin, or German. Among teachers 
and superintendents there is no discussion of what 
these subjects are, nor is there wide difference of 
opinion as to just how they must be taught. If a nov- 
ice were suddenly told to take an arithmetic class, he 
would not need to consult about what he was to do ; 
his textbook would be in itself a sufficient guide. 
The long sets of problems, the careful grading of 
these sets from very easy to somewhat hard, the 
elaborate display of every step in working a new 
kind of problem, the wary and slow advance from 
one small difficulty to another — the whole plan of 
the book declares on every page that things which 
are simple to the teacher are perplexing to the child, 
that the teacher must take time and be thorough, 
that arithmetic is a long campaign in which the con- 
quest of simple fractions is a huge operation. 

But suppose the subject were new and that pro- 
fessors of astronomy, with little sympathy for chil- 
dren's minds, were furnishing the textbooks. Their 
brains have been engrossed with stellar parallax and 
the hyperbolic courses of comets. The result would be 
a preface explaining that "Arithmetic is an intro- 
duction to that noblest and most useful of sciences, 
to the science of quantity and arrangement, to the 
study of ideal constructions, and the discovery there- 

15 



16 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

by of relations between the parts of these construc- 
tions. " The untrained teacher, trusting that the 
great savant knew his business, would dutifully re- 
quire William and Susan to commit this precious 
truth to memory. Then he would begin with a lesson 
in subtracting decimals, quickly go through a page 
in long division, spend two recitations on fractions, 
devote three days to percentage, and so quickly pro- 
ceed to quadratic equations and the plotting of 
curves. 

This is exaggerated and sarcastic. Yet it comes 
much nearer to plain facts than any of. us realize. It 
represents all too vividly the plainest and most pain- 
ful truth about English textbooks. Most of them 
have been written in a literary atmosphere as dif- 
ferent from school-room necessities as astronomy 
is from simple decimals. Their prefatory remarks 
are hardly less astonishing than the bit of fiction 
quoted above. One author writes: "An artist does 
not paint a masterpiece without continual effort, 
changing, modifying, perfecting his work by de- 
grees. Only constant rewriting will help you to 
gain the power of self-expression." That may be 
as true as the definition of mathematics, but it is 
like the astronomy of rhetoric. Another author 
says : "After matters of technique have become so 
easy for us that we need to give them little attention, 
we may seek for something original to say"; and 
again, "When these elements of literary construc- 
tion are once understood, the problem of composi- 
tion is merely that of their effective combination." 
This is sheer astronomy. 

Listen to four illustrations of the hard facts of 
practice: (1) It is all but impossible in four years to 



WHAT ENGLISH IS 17 

train a whole class of bright boys to write ive shall or 
to avoid trys and crys. (2) A professor in one of our 
oldest universities testifies that all he can exact as 
an English requirement for the degree of Ph.B. is 
reasonably decent spelling and punctuation; that to 
insist on skill in paragraphing would mean the with- 
holding of so many degrees that other departments 
would protest. (3) One of our largest universities, 
which organizes freshman composition very strictly, 
gives a passing grade for mere freedom from me- 
chanical errors. (4) A great state university, which 
has a high standard for entrance, announces to 
schools, in order that they may not go astray in Eng- 
lish work, that the only requirement of candidates 
for admission is "proficiency in rudiments"; that 
candidates are qualified if their writing "is devoid 
of interest, originality, or any other literary merit." 
Yet this university has to organize every fall a large 
class for freshmen who are incompetent in mere 
mechanics. 

These testimonies (a whole bookful of similar ones 
could be gathered) are recent. Twenty-five years 
ago, when English was brand-new, such statements 
would have been heard with horror; for rhetorics 
dealt mostly with astronomy — that is, with qualities 
of grace and charm. Fifteen years ago such state- 
ments would have been a little better understood, but 
few teachers would have sympathized with them. 
Ten years ago it still required courage to make any 
such declaration ; it would have been likely to brand 
a man as mechanical, inartistic, soulless. The Eng- 
lish-teaching world still directed its telescope toward 
the stars, still had that lofty literary ideal. Five 
years ago the harsh facts were beginning to be per- 



18 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ceived. In 1909 the Princeton catalogue spoke only 
of examination questions on "subject-matter, struc- 
ture, and style of these books." In 1913 a very 
significant addition was made : and his proficiency in 
English composition. 

From every college in the country goes up the cry, 
"Our freshmen can't spell, can't punctuate." Every 
high school is in despair because its pupils are so 
woefully ignorant of the merest rudiments. A refor- 
mation is everywhere demanded. It is being brought 
about, and so rapidly that most textbooks are 
stranded in the idealism of a decade ago, and many 
teachers are floundering badly in the new conditions. 
It is hard to keep pace with the swift change ; hard 
to know what it is all about, or why our duties are 
preached to us in such contradictory terms. "In- 
spire ' ' is still the watch-cry ; ' ' drill in rudiments ' ' is 
soon to be the fact. 

A bit of personal experience will show how times 
are changing. The first chapter of a draft of this 
book written three years ago had a legend in capi- 
tals: "This is not guaranteed wisdom; it is merely 
what I find it necessary to do. ' ' So much was it the 
fashion to denounce drill in rudiments that the book 
might have been less effective if it had spoken un- 
qualifiedly. That fashion has so much changed now 
that I should feel no hesitation in saying, "This is 
guaranteed wisdom"; because every number of the 
English Journal, every talk with a college instructor, 
makes it plainer that English-teaching has been in- 
efficient — sadly inefficient — and that we have had 
the wrong notion of our duty. In 1912, in the first 
number of the English Journal, a high-school teacher 
declared: "Everywhere the answer is the same. The 



WHAT ENGLISH IS 19 

colleges cannot sufficiently condemn our product. 
. . . Business men tell us that our graduates cannot 
write a decent letter." 

One possible misunderstanding must be here 
stated emphatically. If it can be removed, this will 
be the most important paragraph in the book. I am 
not arguing that tries is of greater importance than 
a lively introduction to a theme. I am not arguing 
that a semicolon is better than emulating the charm 
of Stevenson. I have not the least feeling that me- 
chanical accuracy is more blessed than graceful style. 
I do not think any less of George Meredith because 
he once wrote alright. I am not in any way or de- 
gree, anywhere in this book, instituting any com- 
parison between two such utterly unlike things as 
knowledge of mechanics and literary skill. That 
would be as monstrous as to compare ditch-digging 
with painting a madonna. Knowledge of how to 
form plurals or to use commas is one of the unlove- 
liest things in an ugly world. It gives me no joy 
whatever. But my lack of joy has nothing to do with 
the case. The sad fact of nation-wide experience for 
a quarter of a century is that our effort to teach 
charming English has not amounted to much, and 
that our failure to teach decent English is so scanda- 
lous that men point the finger of scorn at us. Our 
first and simplest and plainest duty is to teach decent 
English. Not the most seraphic of the astronomers 
of rhetoric ever opposed that idea. But we have 
thought this elementary part of the task so easy that 
it could be performed incidentally, as a sort of side- 
issue. Actually it is very hard, requiring careful 
approach, skilful handling, and arduous labor. That 
first task must be done first. This book denies none 



20 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

of the glorious possibilities that may lie beyond. Its 
purpose is to assert that what is of primary impor- 
tance must have foremost consideration. 

That is what English is today — the teaching of 
plain essentials of decent style. When it first be- 
came a college-entrance subject, it was generally de- 
fined as " power to appreciate literature." Examina- 
tions required the candidate to show some ability to 
criticize and appraise literary values. The attention 
of high schools was fixed on the reading of classics, 
on developing "insight," and on writing about books 
' ' appreciatively. ' ' This kind of thing lasted through 
the 90 's and into the present century. How result- 
less' it all was may be judged from a paper written 
in 1905 by a Harvard examiner, in which he calls the 
fetish "that indefinable and vague quality." He 
would not have dared to utter those words ten years 
previously. Now he is not afraid to say: "So few 
possess literary appreciation' that after a careful 
search through the higher graded books of the spring 
and fall examinations of the last two years I have 
found no specimen to quote which possesses more 
than a semblance." This college instructor longs 
just as much as ever for the teacher who can "inspire 
the writer with something of the spirit that awakens 
the consciousness of literary appreciation"; but has 
to protest that as a matter of fact no such power has 
been evidenced on the Harvard papers. 

Then he proposes a substitute: "To create and 
give utterance to his own ideas ; freer, more natural, 
and more individual expression; his individuality 
counts for everything." That has been the slogan 
in the twentieth century. All our texts and councils 
and addresses to conventions have had much to say 



WHAT ENGLISH IS 21 

of "expressing ourselves in a pleasing way." They 
have seldom failed to imply the scorn which this Har- 
vard man put so fiercely: "Teaching this living, 
breathing English composition as mechanically as 
they do the unchangeable and rigid laws of science." 
Hence few teachers have dared to profess publicly 
that they paid any attention to mechanics. The word 
has been anathema. No, we have all been for pleas- 
ing self-expression. 

But these glittering ambitions were all the while 
covering a most hideous reality, which it was not 
good form to discuss. The ugly fact of horrible illit- 
eracy was not to be mentioned in our soulful circles. 
The Harvard man politely referred to it in his paper 
as "what the examiner ought not to find." Since it 
must not be named, he employed that delicate euphe- 
mism. He adroitly said, "The familiarity of the 
teacher with what I am talking about warns me to 
omit discussion. ' ' Even when he is ' ' tempted to pre- 
sent a few examples" of this unmentionable thing, 
he chooses blunders in diction and cases of wobbly 
structure. It is curious to see how very, very refined 
the world was in that by-gone age — for ten years is 
a historical epoch in the history of English. 

Yet the Harvard man misrepresented a great body 
of university opinion. Colleges loathed and dreaded 
the slipshod preparatory work, but failed to insist 
that we should do with thoroughness the humble part 
of our duty. They failed because there was no agree- 
ment on the question of what English is. What they 
longed for was carefulness; what they were princi- 
pally occupied with themselves, what they talked 
about before us, was "appreciation." We have all 
been confused, at variance, unguided. The colleges 



> 



22 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

have misled us ; high schools, planning their courses 
for students who are not to receive further educa- 
tion, have assumed a college attitude, have fixed their 
attention on "appreciation" and "living, breathing 
composition." 

If we were so eager to imitate when the model was 
"appreciation," we should be no less eager to imi- 
tate now that the model is "accuracy first." Very 
lately we have had the unabashed confession from 
four high-minded university instructors that they 
condition a theme in the first semester of freshman 
year for three misspelled words or one incomplete 
sentence.* They may be all wrong. This book has 
nothing to do with any discussion of whether they 
are right or wrong. It deals only with the present- 
day facts. And there is not the slightest doubt that 
these gentlemen fairly represent the sentiment of 
their age about carefulness in details. They say 
flatly that ' ' originality without literacy cannot in any 
place or under any circumstances be considered a 
meritorious quality in a college course in English 
composition." What do you suppose they would 
think about school themes ? 

We have seen the three steps — literary apprecia- 
tion, spontaneity, accuracy. Do not suppose that 
they are steps downward. Education in this country 
is not descending. Do not suppose that they show a 
conflict of purpose or any disagreement as to what 
real merit is. All sensible teachers must agree on 
what constitutes a good theme, do agree always that 
ability to apprehend literary values and to express 

* See the very interesting article on ' ' Grading Freshman Composi- 
tion" at the University of Illinois, in the English Journal for Nov., 
1915. 



WHAT ENGLISH IS 23 

oneself pleasingly are the only qualities that make 
writing valuable. These steps do not mark any 
change in a judgment that has never altered since 
Cadmus invented letters. They simply show a pro- 
gressive realization of what cannot be obtained in 
school composition. All professors still prize and 
give credit for il appreciation' ' ; but they very seldom 
get it, and they cannot require it. All teachers still 
value spontaneity, and we get quite a bit of it ; but we 
have learned that it is not a curricular subject, that 
we cannot require it. What we can require, what it is 
dishonest and criminal not to require, is accuracy. 
It is frightfully wrong to stimulate a little sponta- 
neity (!) in a few pupils while leaving all the pupils 
so ignorant of mechanics that their letters prove 
them to be uneducated. 

Fifty years' from now the student of educational 
history will be puzzled to know what we thought we 
were doing in 1916. His unflattering comment will 
run about like this : ' ' Those teachers were not stylists 
— at least very few were. Why did the great majority 
suppose they could impart what they did not pos- 
sess? They must have seen that only a small minority 
of pupils could achieve a graceful style; what did 
they suppose they were doing for the majority? Did 
they even flatter themselves that the minority's 
charm of style was due to instruction? And suppose 
this power to write pleasingly had been much more 
general, what was the prodigious exercise of it all 
about? Did teachers conceive that they were train- 
ing up professional authors, or were they counting 
on private theme-writing as an enjoyment compara- 
ble to amateur painting or piano-playing? It is 
hard to see the similarity. Were they aiming at 



24 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

literary letters 1 Nothing is so affected and unpleas- 
ant. Why, then, all their parade of l perfecting the 
work by degrees'? What did they think they were 
doing?" 

I, for one, am glad that I shall not have to answer 
those straightforward inquiries. English ought to 
be the greatest good to the greatest number. Per- 
haps we could see more clearly what we make it if 
we paid more attention to that future historian. 

You may be surprised that we have so much to 
say about composition, for you know that themes 
are only one part of English. You would be excus- 
able for thinking them a very small fraction. Glance 
through this list of the different things that English 
is. It represents graphically the impression we 
might get from reading a few dozen pedagogical arti- 
cles, though it is shorter and less confusing than the 
reality would be. Small capitals indicate the topics 
that would stand out more prominently because of 
their frequency or the deep feeling with which they 
are discussed: 

A love of liteeatuee, the college entrance 
books, supplementary reading, narratives 
and expositions, teach cleae thinking, 
grammar, cooperation with other depart- 
ments, magazine reading, imitate Burke or 
Homer or Goldsmith, spelling, teach para- 
graphs by an analogy with geometry, stim- 
ulate refined speech, coach dramatics, pros- 
ody, analyze masterpieces, memorizing of 

poems, INSPIEE A LOVE FOE CLASSICS, DON 't 

tey to impose the classics, history of Eng- 
lish and American literature, read to the 



WHAT ENGLISH IS 25 

pupils, teach effectiveness in writing, insist 
on precision in writing, don't look for pre- 
cision, encourage charm and freedom, stim- 
ulate insight, declamations, oral composi- 
tion, teach play-writing, choose a wide va- 
riety of reading, develop personality, cul- 
tivate sound taste in literature, have pri- 
vate conferences, much reading aloud by the 
pupils, argumentation, word analysis, have 
pupils correct the themes, the love of good 
reading, correct pronunciation, don't use 
annotations, teach criticism of the art of 
different authors, insist on theme outlines, 
coach debaters, refuse to be hampered by 

NARROW COLLEGE REQUIREMENTS, busillCSS 

English, dictionary work, encourage good 

READING. 

Perhaps some of these extra-curriculum tasks, like 
supervising dramatics or debating or journalism, 
may fall to your share. Nothing will be said in this 
book, however, about such matters, because local con- 
ditions vary extremely and because your own good 
sense can get little help from another man's advice. 
They are largely questions of your own talents and 
initiative. The whole mass of jumbled English 
reduces to three subjects, of which the first is how 
to read — called Literature. This is now the part 
of English that receives the largest share of atten- 
tion, the part that may always take up the largest 
portion of time. It may in the future, when elements 
of composition are properly taught in the grades, 
occupy an even greater proportion of the schedule. 
But to this subject, in spite of its importance, I shall 



26 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

devote only one chapter. Handling literature is 
largely a matter of personality; advice about 
methods is likely to be futile; and the world is al- 
ready full of good counsel about what to aim at. The 
second subject is how to speak — called Oral Com- 
position. I am as sensitive as the next man to the 
horrors of our slovenly and clumsy vernacular, but 
fear that they are for the most part beyond the reach 
of schooling; because they are founded in infancy, 
are ingrained by home training, and are as deep and 
wide as any other social phenomenon that we find 
disagreeable. Written forms can be taught; they 
are a veneer put on by the school. But when we get 
beyond some superficial matters of syntax and pro- 
nunciation it is easy to overestimate what a school 
can achieve in changing habits of speech. The prac- 
tical value of learning to compose one's thoughts for 
addressing a crowd is beyond all reckoning. In- 
deed this power is so unusual and so difficult of 
attainment that I fear some teachers deceive them- 
selves as to what they are accomplishing. Even if 
I had their faith I should abstain from discussing 
Oral Composition for the same reasons that influ- 
ence me to be brief with Literature: advice cannot 
guide very far in such a matter of personality, and 
plenty of advice is available. 

The third subject is Written Composition. That 
is the necessity without which all else counts for 
naught. Parents are glad to have Thomas know 
some lyrics by heart, are pleased deeply if he ac- 
quires at school a fondness for reading Thackeray; 
but their gratification turns to ashes if Thomas's 
letter to his grandfather is barbarously spelled and 
punctuated. Business men may not be wholly indif- 



WHAT ENGLISH IS 27 

ferent to a knowledge of Sir Launfal, but they will 
not accept it as an excuse for unbusinesslike spelling 
and punctuation. Colleges are devoutly interested 
in having young people taught to read, but will not 
accept any amount of appreciation in lieu of some 
small measure of ability to spell and punctuate. 
With one common judgment the world insists on a 
modicum of knowledge about framing sentences. 

So that even if it were desirable to take up those 
higher and more beautiful departments, there would 
be sufficient reason for limiting ourselves to decent 
writing. There is another reason which, though it is 
not a certainty, has great weight. In 1915 the uni- 
form college-entrance requirements for the whole 
country were so altered that instead of a blend of 
Literature and Composition in papers a and b we 
now have a first paper on Grammar and Composition 
and a second paper on Literature. This is a most 
significant cleavage. It formally splits apart two 
subjects that have always been inextricably blended 
in the common conception of English. It is a recog- 
nition of a difference that has never been acknowl- 
edged before. It displays one subject which no col- 
lege or technical school can disregard, and another 
subject to which any faculty could be indifferent 
without serious danger — just as it can be to Greek or 
Latin or to some history or music or painting. Liter- 
ature is just like these things in being infinitely more 
enjoyable to the human race, but not indispensable 
in an academic schedule. It is possible that it will 
soon be classed with them as an optional. Its status 
is now an open question. At present it had better 
not to be stressed in a manual that deals with perma- 
nencies. 



28 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

In fact the scope of this book is still further re- 
stricted. Little will be said about authors as models ; 
very little about the planning of a whole composi- 
tion; not much about paragraphs. The following 
chapters aim at decent sentences. If these seem to 
you a petty corner of English, you are in need of 
enlightenment. The art of teaching a commonplace 
mind how to construct a series of reasonably good 
sentences can be no more than outlined in this space. 
It reaches deep into psychology, and can be partially 
acquired only by a patient resourcefulness that taxes 
a teacher's best powers. When we have called Eng- 
lish the process of creating decent sentences, we 
have given an ample definition, one that proposes a 
vast field of endeavor. You shall see. 



CHAPTER II 

DESCENT TO EARTH 

A man who presumes to offer advice is more likely 
to succeed if lie addresses someone in particular. To 
have in mind teachers in general while I write is to 
court failure. I have chosen to imagine that "you" 
who read are a college graduate who has been elect- 
ing a good deal of English during the last two years. 
You have your diploma and are engaged to teach 
English at the Smithboro high school. During the 
summer you are rather vaguely wondering whether 
you had better be doing anything in particular to 
prepare yourself for the new work. You have been 
assigned to freshman English, and have therefore 
been reading over the classics you are to teach 
and have carefully gone through the rhetoric you 
are to use. Is there more to do! You have an 
uneasy feeling that you don't know what is expected 
of you beyond exhibiting some of that critical 
shrewdness and exerting a literary uplift — being a 
center of sweetness and light. Quite by chance a 
friend has put this volume into your hand. 

Of course "you" are all sorts of people. Occa- 
sionally teachers of five years' experience know no 
better than to look over another man's ideas, for 
they never can tell where they may pick up useful 
hints. But I shall always speak as if to one who has 
never taught, for I have known so many cases of 
English-teachers-to-be who would have been grate- 

29 



30 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ful for some simple guide-book. Not that they would 
follow it trustfully (skepticism is the only safe atti- 
tude toward any advice of the kind set down here), 
but that they could get some definite program, some 
platform however opinionated and distorted, from 
which they could depart. It is more useful to stir 
you to a procedure of your own than to persuade you 
to an easy acquiescence. These chapters are not to 
be swallowed, but to be pondered. 

In another way my readers are very heteroge- 
neous : some will have all the English and parts of 
other subjects in a small school ; others will have one 
division of one class in a large city school. One may 
have complete liberty to follow his own judgment; 
another may have everything prescribed. But "you" 
are going to Smithboro, where you will have a good 
deal of chance to exercise your own judgment; 
and "you" are the sort of person who wishes to 
know the essentials of his trade in all conditions, 
so that he may be fitted to do best in present cir- 
cumstances and to go with assurance to a different 
position. 

The purpose is to furnish the general strategy of 
that long, long process of teaching how to form 
good complex sentences. The tricks of the trade, the 
knowledge of facts may be so presented that a 
teacher can profit by other people's failures, learn- 
ing in a few hours what he might struggle toward 
blindly for years — as I did. This manual will not 
inform you how to convey spiritual values. It is 
only a set of mechanical aids for teaching mechanics. 
Any author who promises more is not likely to per- 
form. 

I will first explain something that is true of every 



DESCENT TO EARTH 31 

college graduate when he begins to teach English. 
He has a feeling that his knowledge of the subject is 
broad, catholic. He has come down from the stars 
upon the narrow texts and the ignorant class. Not 
that he is conceited. Far from it. He may be all 
humbleness, may feel too sensitively his shortcom- 
ings. 'But after his senior electives or graduate spe- 
cializings he feels that the little earth of school is all 
surrounded and comprehended by his wideness. This 
feeling is a hindrance. If you can get rid of it, you 
will be in a condition to get better results with ele- 
mentary lessons, because you will begin to realize the 
great work that can be done. You will accomplish 
much more than this : you will be ready to see how 
large the earth really is. It merely appears small 
at first to one who has been studying astronomically 
of how Shakespeare 's genius was not for originating 
plots, of Chaucer's indebtedness to Boccaccio. It is 
actually as wide, as full of wonders, demands as keen 
exploration, as the skyey regions that you have been 
mapping. 

One reason why it seems restricted is that you 
encounter such marvelous ignorance of what seems 
to you common knowledge. In the secondary world 
to be always takes an object, discribe is the form pre- 
ferred by pupils who have read Cicero, Plato is the 
ruler of the underworld, the art of Silas Marner is 
" where Eppie was put in the coal-hole." It is al- 
most impossible to feel that those who make such 
blunders have minds as good as your own. They 
have. That is the great truth for an English teacher 
to keep in mind. A teacher of algebra is differently 
situated; he does know everything and the pupil 
knows nothing. But the English teacher is a fellow- 



32 WHAT- IS ENGLISH? 

being. He never can know a tithe of what may be 
useful and is always in peril of showing his igno- 
rance. Only yesterday I learned mumpsimus, a word 
I have always needed ; and after twenty-five years of 
zealous consultation of the dictionaries I pronounced 
rationale like a French word. When I set myself 
at age forty to learn French irregular verbs, I found 
myself hardly getting a passing mark; a boy who 
was excessively dull in an English class thought I 
was a numskull when he tried to teach me how to 
use a telephone switch-board. When I pause to con- 
sider the ignorance of pupils, I usually find it less 
wonderful than my own. 

Another cause of that feeling of restriction ap- 
pears much less excusable — that is, the violence and 
persistence of error that has been again and again 
dilated upon. Yet even this is not so discreditable 
to the young minds as you would suppose. The ex- 
planation is usually that in lower grades they have 
been allowed to confirm themselves in wrong habits ; 
the wrong forms are fairly engraved in their brains. 
When you tackle seperate, you are like young Thor 
who supposed he was wrestling with a feeble old 
crone, whereas his opponent was the serpent who 
held the earth together. Seperate is a tremendous 
antagonist, who looks feeble enough, but is in reality 
the greatest force in life, evil habit. You have war- 
fare before you; titanic forces are to be grappled 
with. To know in advance what you must contend 
against is an advantage beyond exaggeration. Nearly 
the whole difference between an experienced and an 
inexperienced teacher is that the former has acquired 
a handy code of these troubles, so as to be able to 
anticipate them ; and also a set of methods for stamp- 



DESCENT TO EARTH 33 

ing truths upon youthful brains. The aim of this 
book is to supply some devices of this sort. 

Knowing what to do means knowing what not to 
attempt. The most probable mistake of a novice 
will be struggling with choice of words. All Amer- 
icans are deeply sensitive about diction, feeling that 
this and the other use of a word is "wrong." Not 
in politics or religion do men entertain such violence 
of prejudice. "Good English" always means in 
popular speech correct choice of words. There are 
persons who would rather go to jail than say "had 
rather ' ' ; every printer of a restaurant menu knows 
that welsh rabbit is a vulgarism; one very refined 
old lady always substitutes jerkin for the indecent 
sweater. There is no limit to which such a list could 
not be extended. . Every rhetoric contains a choice 
assortment. A list of errors in diction compiled by 
a university for the guidance of teachers contains the 
following: burglarise, firstly, retrogress, aggravate 
for vex, fix for plight, near-by, to down, cannot help 
but, in back of, lessen for diminish in number. 

Have nothing to do with such things. For one 
reason, the time you put upon them is badly needed 
elsewhere ; for another reason, most such objections 
to common idioms are pure ignorance, for every 
word listed above has good warrant. Firstly is used 
by several writers in the Britannica, and lessen is 
defined by the Century as "contract in number, di- 
minish." I never open to a list of "faulty diction" 
without some new shock ; the latest was to learn in a 
handbook of business forms that very much appre- 
ciate, beg to state, and not a one are "bad English." 
An hour spent with Professor Lounsbury's School- 
mastering the Speech will prove the inanity of all 



34 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

similar efforts to brand everyday idioms as "incor- 
rect." Every teacher who reads J. Lesslie Hall's 
Studies in Usage (Scott, Foresman & Co.) will be 
saved a vast amount of worry over "bad English" 
which is not bad at all, which should never delay a 
theme-reader for an instant. Some of this pedantic 
ignorance is due to bad logic (like arguing that stop 
means to cease motion, and therefore stop for the day 
is wrong) ; some of it is nothing more than misinfor- 
mation that happened to find lodgment, grew into 
sturdy prejudice by being repeated, and finally 
became an object of veneration. If this sounds 
presumptuous or bitter, read Dr. Hall's book. 

Even if such "bad English" were really much 
worse, there is a powerful reason for paying small 
attention to it — namely, that you will spoil all the 
emphasis that ought to be reserved for had of known, 
thusly, borroiv for lend, had ought. When you pro- 
test against fix, you destroy the faith of pupils in 
your judgment about had of known. Keep your pow- 
der for the blowing up of such gross and ridiculous 
things as had of known. There are more serious 
mistakes of policy, but none so truly pathetic, as 
this of lumping together monstrous blunders with 
reputable colloquialisms. The really bad idioms will 
give enough to do. Had ought and couldn't hardly 
are lifelong habits and will not be eradicated in one 
year. 

You have noticed, and you will frequently see as 
you read on, that the writer has a tendency to chal- 
lenge textbooks. This is unfortunate, for no one is 
so tiresome as the man who has no hesitation in 
shouting that all the world is mistaken. Be assured 
that the writer has no sympathy with reckless out- 



DESCENT TO EARTH 35 

cries against authority and will never on any ac- 
count obtrude personal opinions. Every protest 
is backed by good authority. Acquire the habit 
of challenging everything in the books you use, not 
quarrelsomely, but inquiringly. The more you do 
so, the more you will be convinced that because our 
subject is so new and has been dealing so much with 
matters of taste a large proportion of the textbooks 
are tainted with ignorance — not only of facts, but of 
right methods. A novice who is not on his guard 
may be sadly misled. 

As to ignorance of methods, remember that those 
elaborate designs of assembling a lot of ideas, writ- 
ing them all out as they occur, assorting them 
roughly in a first draft, pruning and extending and 
recombining for a second draft, polishing and refin- 
ing for a third draft — remember that all this may 
possibly represent what some authors have done 
with a heap of material to be condensed into a 
weighty chapter, but that it also is what many au- 
thors have never done, is what no child ought to try 
to do. It is astronomy. You are now on earth, where 
only certain things are true, where many things are 
worse than useless, where we walk instead of swing- 
ing a telescope about. 



CHAPTER III 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 



Why one person can spell and another can not is as 
deep and unanalyzable a mystery as why we laugh. 
No acceptable solution has ever been offered. One 
mother who observed her four children from infancy 
testifies that two were born to spell and two were 
born to struggle in vain. You can infallibly divide 
your class the first day of the year into spellers and 
non-spellers. Some uninteresting, narrow-minded 
people are spellers, and some versatile and esthetic 
people are not spellers. Some authors and critics 
cannot spell. But most of them can. There is no 
classification by general traits. 

The case is comparable to that of people who can 
draw and who can not. One seems to notice outlines, 
and so can reproduce them; the other never really 
sees an outline. Whether this difference is as deep 
as an instinct or as shallow as an accidental turning 
of interest in early years there is no knowing. But 
it is the nearest I could ever come to a formula for 
attacking a poor speller. Notice the words ; get an 
interest in the forms. If a poor speller is trying to 
improve himself, that is the direction in which to 
steer. 

This is a frail help. No amount of urging it and 
pleading for it will do much toward bringing up the 
average of a class. 

All experienced teachers develop mnemonic de- 

36 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 37 

vices for startling a child's attention, trying to make 
an impression so striking that it will recur when next 
the child starts to write the wrong form, that it will 
"run out and bite him." One teacher tells his classes 
that in the second syllable of separate they ought to 
find their father. Another plot against carelessness 
is to write on the board s-e-p, wait a moment until 
attention is concentrated, then dash down an A a 
foot high, then finish in small letters. No plan is 
bizarre enough to prevent seperate from appearing 
on some theme within a week. "De+scribo" written 
out extravagantly, with scathing or burlesque accom- 
paniment, and repeatedly exhibited with variations 
for weeks, will not kill discribe. A dining-room is 
a dinning -voora and a writer is a writter to the end 
of a year of drill for some obdurate minds — yes, to 
the end of three years. This sounds discouraging, 
but think how much better it is to know what is com- 
ing than to go through, the year without knowing 
what you are to expect. 

Several professors in different parts of the coun- 
try have been at work on this Augean problem. They 
have hardly gone deep enough in their published 
monographs, but their trend is unmistakable. They 
are discovering that the trouble is with a feiv words. 
It is a momentous finding. When the school world 
has all heard of it, and when later we all believe it 
and work on the basis of it, a new era will have 
dawned in secondary English. How far we are still 
in darkness may be judged from a paragraph in 
Cook and O'Shea's The Child and His Spelling, 
1914: "How many words should a child be able to 
spell when he finishes the eighth grade? Estimates 
made by various teachers and administrators and 



38 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

professors ran all the way from five hundred to fif- 
teen thousand. A rough estimate of the number of 
words presented to the typical pupil of a first-class 
elementary school gives from eight thousand to ten 
thousand. The average elementary speller contains 
upwards of six thousand words." This, mind you, 
is in the grades ! The conclusion of the investigators 
is that their lists of 763 are a minimum for the lower 
grades, and that an additional 2200 should be studied 
in the upper grades. This advice seems to me fear- 
fully beyond the truth, for it means that children are 
to learn such words as legislature, minimum, and 
opportune. 

One investigator who anticipated them by a year 
reached a much lower minimum. In Concrete Inves- 
tigation of the Material of English Spelling, by Pro- 
fessor Jones, of the University of South Dakota, are 
tabulated the misspellings in 15,000,000 words of 
theme-writing done by pupils in the grades in four 
states. Here are some quotations from his com- 
ments on the data. 

1. Indeed the very words that give most trouble 
in spelling are almost invariably found in the second 
or third grade lists, and faithfully reappear through- 
out the subsequent years. Over nine-tenths of all 
words misspelled by the 1050 grade students are 
found in these two lists. 

2. From the standpoint of usefulness this second- 
grade list is worth many times as much as all the 
other lists combined. 

3. Since these troublesome but useful words are 
not pointed out and effectively dealt with in these 
early grades, our handling of the most dangerous 
spelling material is not efficient, and students go on 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 



39 



misspelling, year after year, words that should be 
mastered in the early school years. 

4. Since grade students commonly use from 500 
to 2500 words in writing, yet on the average mis- 
spell but about fifty words, not one child out of a 
thousand misspelling as many as one hundred words, 
our spelling problem is not so gigantic as it is com- 
monly believed to be, for the reason that a handful of 
words misspelled over and over by each student has 
misled us in our judgment. 

5. The twenty-words-a-day lesson should dis- 
appear. 

It is instructive to see how this staid scientific 
report waxes emotional when it discusses the mis- 
spellings of simple and commonplace words. Mr. 
Jones presents a list of "One Hundred Spelling 
Demons of the English Language." Surely this is 
an authentic demonology and is worth presenting. 

("Order not significant after first four," says Mr. 
Jones.) 



which 


used 


lose 


ready 


their 


always 


Wednesday 


forty 


there 


where 


country 


hour 


separate 


women 


February 


trouble 


don't 


done 


know 


among 


meant 


hear 


could 


busy 


business 


here 


seems 


guess 


many 


write 


Tuesday 


says 


friend 


writing 


wear 


having 


some 


can't 


answer 


just 


been 


sure 


two 


doctor 


since 


loose 


too 


whether 



40 



WHAT IS ENGLISH? 



believe 


coming 


cough 


would 


knew 


early 


piece 


built 


laid 


they 


raise 


color 


tear 


half 


ache 


making 


choose 


break 


read 


dear 


tired 


buy 


said 


instead 


grammar 


again 


hoarse 


easy 


minute 


very 


shoes 


through 


any 


none 


tonight 


every 


much 


week 


wrote 


enough 


beginning 


often 


heard 


truly 


blue 


whole 


does 


sugar 


though 


won't 


once 


straight 



I know nothing about spelling in the grades, nor 
how many words ought to be taught. But it is a fact 
that most pupils are advanced to the high school 
without knowing the "demons," that somehow the 
grade teachers in their efforts to teach five thousand 
have not taught their and meant, that these Wrong 
habits have become fixed almost ineradicably, that 
most secondary spelling consists in trying to over- 
turn the vicious misspellings of a few hundred com- 
mon words. This is so important that it must be 
explained rather fully. 

The best introduction is a pair of quotations, the 
first from a learned treatise on spelling: "We do not 
yet know with any show of accuracy which of these 
one, two, or three thousand words are persistent 
sources of error among large numbers of people." 
The other quotation is the words of a mere high- 
school teacher: "It has been the privilege of the 
writer to follow one pupil through the four years' 
course of English with the one word benefiting, only 



INTENSIVE SPELLING , 41 

to be compelled to explain the derivation and the 
rule for doubling ten times to the same individual 
during the fourth year." 

Every secondary teacher does know which words 
are persistent sources of error. If you should con- 
front a grade teacher, a high-school teacher, and a 
professor of rhetoric with the forms stoped, wierd, 
and finaly, you would get from each the same weary 
smile of recognition ; each one knows that from kin- 
dergarten to fiftieth reunion, from Maine to Califor- 
nia, from grocer's boy to successful novelist, it is the 
Same three hundred deadly words that betray illit- 
eracy. A college graduate who can't spell idiosyn- 
crasy is excusable. College examiners needn't worry 
if a candidate for admission writes maintainance — 
provided he never writes such forms as noticable 
or occassion. 

Cease to worry about the three thousand ; make a 
bloodthirsty attack on the three hundred. 

I was fifteen years in discovering that most of my 
spelling troubles were confined to a few hundred 
very common words and a few dozen type-forms. 
All that time I faithfully dictated the thousands — 
scythe, knead, porcelain, etc. During the first five 
years I was quite unconscious that I wasn't getting 
anywhere ; during the next five I slowly learned that 
some forms like seperate and discribe were deathless 
hydras ; during the last five I discovered that it was 
infinitely harder to get rid of dissapoint and definate 
(and infinitely more useful) than to teach a hundred 
forms like musician and engineer. Why more use- 
ful? Because the dis words are used a hundred times 
as often. Why more difficult? Because as spelling 
is at present organized a heedless pupil may slip 



42 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

through the grades writing these common words 
wrong year after year. A firm, an all but unbreak- 
able habit is formed, which may, in some cases, defy 
the most strenuous attack in the high school. 

The day will come when every grade teacher will 
be supplied by his principal with an authorized list 
of "Words That Must Be Started Right. It is crimi- 
nal to spend time on banana or crystal until too 
and their are habitually spelled correctly when the 
writer's attention is on a composition. They must 
be paraded on the blackboard, dilated upon, written 
and sounded with exaggerated emphasis, dictated, 
re+urned to and returned to. But even then the work 
is only begun; until the knowledge is habitually 
applied when the main attention is elsewhere the 
spelling lessons are vain. 

This last year I have been observing a class of 
average boys preparing to take final entrance exam- 
inations for college, all of whom had studied Latin 
for four years, had passed paper a, and nearly all 
of whom had been strictly drilled in spelling and 
punctuation for from four to six years. Their most 
frequent error was writing to for too. Not, mind 
you, that the second o was carelessly omitted; the 
nature of the error was usually misspelling. There 
for their occurred with enough frequency to drive a 
teacher insane. Replys persisted to the end of the 
year, and one boy, who had been under my care for 
six years, wrote planing for planning on his college 
paper. His was an obdurate mind; but if for six 
years before he came to me he had been allowed to 
exercise the bad habit, he was not entirely to blame 
for not overcoming it in the next six. 

One more exhibit may do good. It is a list of the 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 



43 



misspellings in a spelling test made by a class of 
seventeen, corresponding to the second year of high 
school, near the end of the school year. All of the 
class had had unremitted violent instruction in the 
few hundred common forms — five of them for one 
year, seven for two years, and five for three years. 
The one-year boys did not contribute all the errors — 
nor did the three-year boys fail to contribute. 



'askes 
J gritting 
J beleive 
[dispair 



twice J w }^ d 

\ childrens ' 



three j 
times 



trys 



four 
times 



thrushes 's 



This difficulty of rooting out an old habit, of fixing 
a new one in its place, of insuring the operation of 
the new habit when the mind is busy expressing 
ideas, is quite beyond the comprehension of any pro- 
fessor or critical parent. It passes the understand- 
ing of the teacher himself. Although at present I 
regard myself as a spelling fiend, still I am sure that 
a decade hence I shall look back upon my present 
self as mildly unconscious of the forces against 
which I struggle. 

The essence of these forces is always confusion. 
Some psychologist of the future may formulate the 
mental mix-ups ; at present we guess and grope. But 
our minds must be cleared of the idea that we deal 
with mere heedlessness. Consider shepherd. Every 
boy and girl is confronted throughout his life with 



44 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

such spellings of the proper name as Shephard, 
Shepard, until his mental picture is a blurred and in- 
extricable composite. Ashes, fourty, villiage, dis- 
pair, shure, controle, fiew, etc., are easily referable 
to parallel correct forms ; minuite may be due to bis- 
cuit. Oral confusions only partially account for 
such mistakes as probally, atheletics, supprise, 
enimy. Of a different sort and more complicated 
are errors in using suffixes. It is quite impossible 
for the trained mind to realize the alertness neces- 
sary in an immature mind, during the rush of a 
written test, if the knowledge of altering final letters 
is to be properly applied. For example, the teacher 
finds enjoies, is inflamed with wrath, wonders if the 
pupil has any mentality; inquires the next day in 
class about replies and employs, and finds that the 
understanding of the principle is perfectly clear; 
confronts the pupil with his idiotic enjoies and. sav- 
agely demands whether his brain is larger than a 
pea ; the modest answer is, ' ' I got mixed up. ' ' Bright 
boys, whose accuracy in a spelling test is invincible, 
will in themes write ladie's, dinning room, does' nt, 
and be just as puzzled as the teacher when the errors 
are disclosed. The old ignorance is always slipping 
in to confound the recently established knowledge. 
In some form or other misspelling is confusion. 

Therefore the first object of intensive spelling is 
to establish order. "This is invariably done"; 
"such a form does not exist"; "when must you 
always double?" "Henrys ought to look as strange 
to you as snow in July"; "there are only three pre- 
terits in aid"; "only ex, pro, and sub take ceed" — 
and so on eternally, the old "alwayses" and 
"nevers" being unremittingly presented until they 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 45 

are deeply planted in careless minds, take root, and 
crowd out the confusions. 

It is the opposite of this plan, it is creating con- 
fusion, to present there and their together, or seize 
and siege, or all right and already. When you dis- 
play as a group of freaks seize, weird, either, empha- 
size them as three of a kind, repeat them and ex- 
patiate upon them, then you make one clean-cut im- 
pression ; for a few in the class that one presentation 
is indelible. If you then say anything about siege, 
you smudge the mental diagram ; for some in the class 
you may have created permanent confusion. If all 
right gets fervid comment in a recitation (never is 
that wrong form to be exhibited), then there must 
be nothing said that day about already, for that 
would be to construct disorder. 

Examine your own processes, if you have any 
memories of that remote period when you had any 
slight troubles with spelling. Suppose you were in 
doubt about cemetary. Did it help you to pair it 
with secretery? Was it your custom to put dis- 
similar words together and say, "Now, I will remem- 
ber that the first is different from the second"? 
Suppose that when you were a bit flustered before 
a class you had to declare the proper spelling of a 
word, would you wish mental pictures like these? 

mcompat { a J ble emba [ rr J ass 

mcontest [ a J ble ha [_ rr J ass 

Most of us have to put the similar forms together. 
Once we have learned "stationery is not used in a 



46 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

cemetery," no embarrassment can make ns err with 
either word. By some mnemonic device we fix the 
impression of two r's in embarrass; by another de- 
vice, in another brain-cell, we fix one r in harass; if 
we pair them, we are lost. 

The author can cite a striking proof from his own 
recent experience. A spelling test of twenty choice 
words that have been bowling over all the peda- 
gogues was dictated to him. One is caterpillX >r. 

Even the disciplined teacher's mind was confused; 
for it had seen both forms frequently, had pre- 
viously looked up the word, had thought of the two 
together (one as old, one as new) ; now, in the test, 
it hesitated, was confused, was lost. If that 
mind had grouped similar forms, had once said 
caterpillar is like pillar, it would have acquired 
knowledge. 

The whole system of intensive spelling is to build 
groups of words that corroborate each other. 
Almost, already, always, altogether belong together, 
help each other. All right must be kept as far apart 
as possible in time and thought. "There is no such 
thing as an adjective in us," we must insist, "no 
such thing as an adjective in full"; later we may 
casually mention bogus and citrus, or comment on 
crop-full. "Speeches every week" will teach the 
spelling of two words; "he speaks in a weak voice" 
will, later, teach two others. But "he speaks a 
speech" may unteach spelling for life. Lose, move, 
and prove; laid, paid, said; exceed, proceed, succeed; 
divide and divine; he hadn't a particle of principle; 
the principal man was a practical man ; ninth, truly, 
argument; decision and occasion — all such group- 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 47 

ings help to build up an assured and lasting 
knowledge. 

There is no other clue to the labyrinth of ie and 
ei. " Always expect it to be ie unless you know 
definitely to the contrary." Learn the four cases 
in which it is ei: (1) when the sound is that of long 
a or long i; (2) when the sound is short i or short e 
(except mischief, kerchief, friend, and sieve); (3) 
after c (except financier); (4) in six freaks: seize, 
weird, leisure, either, neither, inveigle. For practi- 
cal purposes the two great points to emphasize are : 
(I) always write ie for the long e sound — piece, be- 
lieve, fierce, siege, etc. — except seize, weird, and 
neither; (II) always ei after c. 

The whole matter can be remembered by the fol- 
lowing jangles, the plan of which is to suggest the 
rules in the first lines and the exceptions in the next 
two: 

1. !.> before e'when sound is long e 

Seize, inveigle, either 
Weird, leisure, neither 

2. Ei after c or when sound is not e 

Financier, fiery, and mischief 
Friend, sieve, view, and kerchief 

This looks complicated to you ; much more will it 
to your pupils. But so far as I know, it is the only 
rule given under heaven among men. If you ap- 
proach it one step at a time, getting yourself and the 
class gradually familiar with it, it will finally seem 
almost as simple as "Thirty days hath September." 
Should you not wish to use it, you can at least do 
valuable work (and the important part) by empha- 
sizing the two points suggested above. 



48 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

I will add a paragraph about some exceptions ; not 
because it is very useful and certainly not because 
your classes will ever need it, but so as to give assur- 
ance against embarrassment if a pupil should sud- 
denly spring one of the forms. There are no excep- 
tions to long a; use for illustration sleigh, freight, 
rein, vein, feint, their, heir. The only real exception 
to long i is fiery, for such forms as lie, vie, tries do 
not give trouble on this score, are not entered for 
discussion ; use for illustration height, sleight, stein, 
meister singer, seismograph, kaleidoscope, eider- 
down, heigh-ho. Words in short i are foreign, sover- 
eign, surfeit, counterfeit; the only exceptions I know 
are mischief, leer chief, and sieve. "Short e" is put 
in above simply for completeness; the only one I 
have noted is heifer (though often leisure) ; the only 
exception is friend. One speller makes a point of 
glacier as an exception to the c rule, another is wor- 
ried about ancient, and we might add species; but 
these, on account of their sh sound, give no trouble, 
do not belong in this class. There are a number of 
exceptions to long e, but none that are likely to occur 
on themes; plebeian is a possibility; seignorage is 
an impossibility; Scotch forms like weir and teind 
are not in court; nor archaisms like teil; sheik and 
obeisance have a common pronunciation in long a. 
Lieu is like view. 

The first draft of this solution of ie and ei was 
printed in the New York Times in 1897, has been 
constantly checked up since, and may be trusted; 
though there is not the least doubt that shortly after 
this book is published I shall wish I had slipped in 
one more comment or exception. Remember: All 
these ins and outs are not your business, but your 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 49 

stock of reserve knowledge; all that counts much is 
"the two great points." 

Your business is always to determine what error 
is common and to drive ceaselessly at that. A few 
common names in your locality may be necessary, 
or a few names that are being frequently written 
because they occur in the books you study. I have 
heard of a teacher who always dictated for the last 
word of a spelling test the Indian name of the school 
in which he taught; it was known that the name 
would always be given, yet it was seldom that the 
whole class could write it correctly. A wise teacher 
(whose chief interest is in literature) says that he 
finds it good economy to spend ten minutes in getting 
on the board by slow degrees, with facetious com- 
ment, with repetitions and variations, the name 
Macaulay. 

It is not a matter of commonness, but of what you 
find commonly misspelled. For example, in the Eng- 
lish Journal for June, 1916, two teachers in two dif- 
ferent kinds of schools testify that some of Mr. 
Jones's demons do not trouble them. But in gen- 
eral it is the same old list that is needed every- 
where. There is striking proof from preparatory 
schools that careful teachers working quite inde- 
pendently will reach very similar results as to 
demons. It may be well to print one list, which was 
got up on this basis: Have we encountered a mis- 
spelling so often that it can be fairly called a demon ? 
In case of doubt a word was excluded. A few of the 
forms were included more as illustrations of a type 
than as demonic in themselves — like emphatically 
and delicious. A few were due to local conditions — 
such as privilege and tragedy. But you can certainly 



50 



WHAT IS ENGLISH? 



count that nine-tenths will trouble you in your first 
month. ' - Second-grade words ' ' is used as a title for 
the first list simply because it is less sarcastic than 
"for the little ones." All but six actually are in Mr. 
Jones's second-grade list. "Fifth-grade" means 
only "not quite so childish." 



SECOND.-GEADE WOKDS 



It is too big 

Their house 

I know the lesson 

He knew it 

He threw the ball 

The ball was thrown 

He meant to do right 

He shows good sense 

He asks questions 

He turns the crank 

He speaks in a weak voice 

Tired after working 

We got off the road 

He ought to have told us 

We told him 

Stay there 

A new rule 

Go through the woods 

They are almost here 

It is already five o 'clock 

He always comes 

Although I don't want to 

Wait until six 

Speeches every week 



rough 

enough 

which 

straight 

across 

among 

every 

before 

once 

crowd 

some 

piece 

believe 

friend 

since 

stretch 

a rough road 

toward the house 

It is quite cold 

The guide led us 

No one except him 

I am sure it is sugar 

Did you lose the money' 



perhaps 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 51 

FIFTH-GRADE WORDS 

probably sentence surprise 



writing 



E dropped before ing 
coming dining 



hoping 



Canoeing and shoeing are peculiar forms 



stop 


stopped 


stopping 


drag 


dragged 


dragging 


hop 


hopped 


hopping 


slam 


slammed 


slamming 


sin 


sinned 


sinning 


strip 


stripped 


stripping 


plan 


planned 


planning 


begin 




beginning 


occur 


occurred 


occurring 


compel 


compelled 


compelling 


refer 


referred 


referring 


prefer 


preferred 


preferring 


omit 


omitted 


omitting 


control 


controlled 


controlling 


roll 


rolled 


rolling 


write 


written 


writing 


dine 


dined 


dining-room 


suffer 


suffered 


suffering 


offer 


offered 


offering 


travel 


traveled 


traveling 


develop 


developed 


developing 


open 


opened 


opening 



52 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 




3 

try trying tries 
tie tying ties 
lie lying lies 


tried 

tied 

lay 


It lay there yesterday 

It has lain there many days 




study studying studies 
hurry hurrying hurries 


studied 
hurried 



Verbs in ay — three peculiar forms 

lay laid lays 

pay paid pays 

say said says 

All other ay verbs are regular 

stay stayed stays 

play played plays 

delay delayed delays 



Consonant before y 




lady 

story 

family 


ladies 

stories 

families 


Vowel before y 




alley 

monkey 

journey 

boy 

play 


alleys 

monkeys 

journeys 

boys 

plays 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 



53 



easy 

happy 

heavy 

lucky 

busy 


easier 

happier 

heavier 

luckier 

business 


easily 

happiness 

heavily 

luckily 

busily 


i 
Adjectives like these end 


mful 




awful 






painful 
useful 






fearful 






hopeful 
successful 





8 

Adjectives like these end in ous 

famous ingenious 

generous cautious 

precious delicious 

conscious religious 

victorious curious 

jealous suspicious 

furious mysterious 

various bogus is a peculiar form 



dis + agree = disagree 
dis + appear = disappear 
dis + appoint = disappoint 
dis + satisfied = dissatisfied 



54 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

mis + spell = misspell 

re + commend = recommend 

re + collect = recollect 

accommodate 

committee 

mean + ness = meanness 

drunken + ness = drunkenness 

sullen + ness = sullenness 

10 
No hyphens 

together * nevertheless 

altogether nowhere 

without apiece 

whatever inside 

wherever outside 

11 
generally 
really 
naturally 
finally 
usually 
accidentally 
especially 

formally = in a formal way 
formerly = in former times 
practically 
artistically 
frantically 
enthusiastically 
grammatically 
sarcastically 
emphatically 

Publicly is a peculiar form 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 

12 
Two sep a rate words 



55 



all right 
at last 



in spite 
in fact 



13 

Trouble with o 

forty 

prisoner 

porch 

[lose 

^move 

[prove 

14 

trouble with u 

minute 
pursuit 
accustomed 
guard 



four 

fourteen 

though 

thorough 

trouble 



15 

Trouble with ou 



of course not 

the ship's course 

proud 

cloud 

loud 

double 



56 



WHAT IS ENGLISH? 





16 




Trouble with a 


separate 


any 


separation 


many 


preparation 


again 


secretary 


furnace 


grammar 


a stationary engine 


pleasant 


coarse cloth 


descendant 


rainy weather 




It doesn't affect me 




17 




Trouble with e 


describe 


pretty 


description 


repetition 


biggest 


benefit 


greatest 


whether to go or not 


enemy 


buying stationery 


destroy 


a good effect 


despair 


a quiet Sunday 




18 




Trouble with i 


definite 


intelligent 


divide 


originally 


divine 


delicate 


privilege 


medicine 


view 


disturb 



similar 






INTENSIVE SPELLING 57 

19 

Possessives 

a lady's hat the ladies' hats 

a fox's tail the foxes' tails 

Mr. Jones's house the Joneses' property 

the men's hats 

the children r s toys 

its 

yours 

hers 

theirs 

whose 

One another's burdens 
Each other's arms 
Any one's cap 



20 
An apostrophe shows that letters have been left out 

have + not = haven 't 
did + not = didn 't 
are + not = aren't 
was + not = wasn 't 
should + not = shouldn 't 
does + not = doesn 't 
we + will = we '11 
they + are = they 're 
it + is = it's 
you + have = you 've 
where + is = where 's 



58 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

21 

a participle 

an article 

a principle 

a practical man 

the principal thing 

22 

Prononnce brilliant ruffian; a comes before i in the 
following : 

certain 
captain 
villain 

23 

decision I omission 1 , , , 

>one s = z . . ^two s's = sh 

occasion J permission J 

Possessive is a peculiar form 

24 

Queerly pronounced 

Wednesday carriage 

beautiful answer 

knowledge solemn 

marriage necessary 

one woman three women 

Ought not to be queerly pronounced 

government particularly 

arctic Saturday 

February quarter 

obstinate corner 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 
25 



59 



athletics 
possibly 
library- 
translate 



No extra letters 



translation 

apologies 

apologize 



around 
arouse 
imitate 



26 



Single letters 



amount 

image 

imagine 



27 



E before a suffix that begins with a consonant 



nineteen 


affectionately 


ninety 


immediately 


surely 


entirely 


safety 


extremely 


arrangement 


definitely 


sincerely 


immensely 



Ninth, truly, argument are peculiar forms 

Drop e before a suffix that begins with a vowel 

lovable 

immovable 

desirable 



60 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Pronounce cable gable elegance- 
Notice the e's in the following: 

noticeable changeable 

unmanageable peaceable 

vengeance 

E is kept in order to preserve the sound of c and g 
Judgment is a peculiar form 



Double letters 

supplies address 

approach arrive 

29 
Some of the more common nouns in el 

angel tunnel 

nickel shovel 

channel level 

30 
Words that end in d or nd have ou 

loud found 

cloud ground 

proud sound 

But "put the w in crowd" 

31 

critic ' opinion 

criticize fascinate 

criticism 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 61 

32 

prophet to prophesy 

a prophecy he prophesies 

two prophecies 

33 
Five Wonderful Words : 

goddess comedy 

shepherd tragedy 

nymph 

In two ways you will see that the list seems not to 
carry out what was said earlier. First, there appear 
to be some linkings of forms that are confused — like 
brilliant and certain, formerly and formally. This 
is partly for convenience in printing and partly with 
the hope that brilliant will make villian ridiculous 
(whereas already has no power to make alright 
ridiculous, but only to make it seem natural). Sec- • 
ond, the list is unemphatic. This is because it is a 
mere record of what pupils already know. Every 
form has had its day or its year on the blackboard 
for special exposition. A noteworthy case is the six 
possessive forms, which represent a gory field of 
battle. Fox's will slaughter many a boy who can 
spell hallucination without a quiver; Joneses' is 
almost as deadly as a big howitzer. Those six forms 
are a whole campaign in themselves. Insist that one 
simple thing must be done for the singular — add 's. 
Why this is so difficult heaven only knows, but 
Bums' 's and Jones's are almost unattainable by 
some. Though many writers dislike the cacophony of 
Williams's and only a minority of speakers will say 



62 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Howells's novels, it is certain that modern usage pre- 
fers to print the added s in all cases except for the 
name Jesus and a few combinations of sake (good- 
ness' sake) I When pupils inquire, "But isn't Mr. 
Jones' house correct?" answer that it is easier and 
safer to follow the invariable rule; for that is the 
fact in school work. But you need not insist that 
anyone should violate his sensibility. Insist on two 
simple steps for the plural possessive. The first is 
' ' Get your plural. ' ' They will flinch and shy and be 
astoundingly timorous. But gradually they will gain 
courage to write Charleses. Then, second step, put 
the apostrophe after the s, except in a few cases 
where the plural does not end in 5 — such as oxen and 
mice. 

For five years the school that prepared this list 
has used only the four hundred forms. It is an 
astonishing method. Ten years ago I should have 
called the man who proposed it just what you or 
your principal or your advisory friend will call him 
— a crank. It sounds preposterous, but is purely the 
result of experience and cannot be discredited except 
by somebody else 's conscientious trial for five years. 
Month after month and year after year the pupils 
are put through the same familiar pages. Spellers 
have been abandoned. All spelling time is devoted 
to trying to fix common forms ineradicably. Even 
in this the failure is woeful. Of course it is. Im- 
provement in spelling can be achieved only in pro- 
portion to the cube-root of the effort expended. At 
the end of the year only ten out of the twenty-five 
boys in the second-year class can spell all the words 
in the pamphlet. Nevertheless they are a better 
trained crowd than was produced by the old method. 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 63 

The most hopeless spellers miss only 10 per cent of 
the words. After several reviews a test of thirty- 
five words is marked zero for two errors. 

It is understood in the grading of themes and 
written tests that there are three kinds of misspell- 
ings: (1) unusual words, (2) words that the ideal 
pupil would have observed, but to which attention 
has not been called, (3) words that have been spe- 
cially dwelt on. Nothing is deducted for the first 
kind, little for the second, but zero is the only limit 
for penalizing the third. A third-year pupil who 
writes laclys in an otherwise perfect hundred-word 
test may get 80 per cent in September or 40 per cent 
in June. For the violation of an invariable, familiar, 
clearly-understood rule no marking is too severe. 
And severity is the truest kindness. It often teaches 
a stupid pupil in October what leniency would leave 
untaught in June. 

There is, I am sure, one advantage in intensive 
spelling that no amount of spread-out work can 
secure : it establishes a nucleus. When a pupil has 
reached the stage where dissapoint and finaly are 
ludicrous, where they instantly recall the teacher's 
invective, then that pupil is ready to be more ashamed 
of transative or to detect and reform apropriation. 
As long as he is taught that he is responsible for a 
vast field of seldom-used nouns he feels abused, 'he 
justifies his errors to himself ; but when he is strictly 
liable for only a few square yards he cannot excuse 
himself. He is then alive to errors ; which means 
that his intellect has been quickened. When a boy 
who used to look on Macauly with indifference has 
come to look upon it as an absurdity, then he has 
taken a most significant intellectual step. 



64 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Such advances dignify the petty and onerous 
teaching of spelling. And not in that homiletic sense 
in which we are encouraged to sweep a room as if it 
were God 's work, but in that practical and scientific 
sense in which the dissection of a mosquito builds the 
Panama Canal. "When you bring a pupil into a posi- 
tion where buisness is ludicrous, you have made him 
dread to be ludicrous in the case of other words ; you 
have disclosed that pest of indifference; you are 
preparing for a constructive work. 

Limiting the work to such a small area may seem 
intensive enough, yet even in this restricted space 
one portion is much more valuable, more difficult, 
and to be labored in more intensively than the rest. 
It is the portion that includes derived forms, like 
preterits and plurals. Don't think of the major part 
of your task as a list of words. That is what you will 
always be hearing and reading — how many thousand 
words should be in our list, or how many hundred. 
Even this chapter has been presenting a list. But 
the most limited list is still a collection of mere units. 
Much more important is a set of the few principles 
that govern common changes of form. 

To illustrate. The form stoped is a greater evil 
than seperate because it shows ignorance of an 
invariable principle whose application is required 
several times on every theme. It means that the 
pupil will go sluming and diping and that he will 
be forever triping and sliping in a most ghastly way. 
Ladys may not be worse than discribe, but it means 
a woeful ignorance that is going to be displayed in 
every composition; it signifies more illiteracy, a 
more hopeless mental state. A ladle's hat certifies 
that the writer is grossly uneducated, while prohally 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 65 

proves no more than that he is careless. It is such 
always-used principles that we must drive at. 
Dissapear may be good evidence that the writer will 
misspell several similar words that occur once in a 
while ; comeing is proof that he will misspell a hun- 
dred that occur constantly. It is these derived 
forms that multiply errors. When you establish 
such a type-form, you wipe out a whole regiment of 
the enemy. 

The following rules and groupings are mostly 
familiar, but some of the hints about what to expect 
and how to attack may be useful. 

i — AFFIXES 

1. If a one-syllable verb ends in a single conso- 
nant preceded by a single vowel, double the conso- 
nant before ed. Sloped is the form that occurs ten 
times oftener than other failures of this class. Make 
pupils pronounce hope, hoped and then stope, sloped, 
and ask if they know what stope means. This is not 
like exhibiting such wrong forms as wierd and 
alright, which the pupil never sees in his reading and 
which the teacher ought not to show him. Correct 
forms like slopped and sloped, lopped and loped are 
frequently seen and have to be distinguished. 

If the accent is on the last syllable of longer verbs, 
the situation is the same. Illustrate occurred by 
furred. Contrast it with cured and secured. Occured 
and controled are the conmion ones. Many pupils 
have no ear for the abstraction "accent on the last 
syllable," and are puzzled about preferred and of- 
fered. But if you pronounce prefer, with an exag- 
gerated emphasis, they smile at the curiosity. Then 
a good formula is: " P 'refer ed ought to look just aa 



66 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

queer to your eye as it sounds to your ear." Din- 
ning-room is a form that sometimes survives the 
most slaughterous attacks, and writting is very long- 
lived. (Chagrined is the only correct form of its 
kind. ) 

2. Drop a final e before a suffix beginning with 
a vowel. The instinctive dislike of doing this is very 
strong, so that while you very frequently see such 
an error as comeing in signs, you will probably never 
see shoeing misspelled. These oe verbs, and a few 
rarities like dye and singe (to avoid confusion) are 
the only ones that retain the e before ing. In Eng- 
land it is kept very commonly before able, and we 
all have to write mileage and acreage, but in 
America we consistently write tamable, lovable, etc. 
The exception is after a g or c i l to preserve the soft 
sound." Ask how a pupil pronounces cable and 
gable; then force him to pronounce peacable and 
changable. The commonest exceptions are ninth, 
truly, judgment (almost universally printed so, de- 
spite dictionary warrant for the e), and argument. 
The regular ones that have to be most contended for 
are surely, arrangement, immediately, definitely. 

3. Change y to i after a consonant : 

(a) in plurals — stories (but proper names are 
usually not changed — Henrys; and there 
are a few abnormal forms like stand-bys 
and drys) 

(b) in third singular — cries 

(c) in past tense — cried 

(d) in comparison — happier, luckiest 

(e) in adverbs — easily, luckily 

(f ) before ness — business 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 67 

Probably not more than half your class can learn 
that last word until they see the demonstration: 
busy+ness=business. 

4. Change ie to y in tying, lying, etc. 

5. There are three irregular preterits in aid: 
laid, paid, said. All other ay verbs are regular, like 
stayed, delayed. " Delay" is not a compound like 
''inlay," and staid is so unusual that a college exam- 
iner once marked it an error. 

6. Three eed verbs : exceed, proceed, succeed. 
Others are regular, like precede and the noun pro- 
cedure. 

7. There are no adjectives in full except newly- 
coined, hyphenated words. They are always like 
useful. 

8. Pupils use the double I in some common 
adverbs very grudgingly. The most abused are 
filially, accidentally, usually, and really. 

9. Adjectives in ic have to take on an al before 
the ly. Publicly is an exceptional form. 

10. Probably everyone in your class can spell 
appoint and knows that the common prefix is dis, 
yet a fourth of them will repeatedly misspell disap- 
point and disappear. The same form of emphasis 
is needed for re+commend, mean+ness, etc. 

11. Usually al forms an adjective and le is a 
noun ending. Principal and principle look simple, 
but— 

12. A few verbs like mimic and picnic require a 
k before ing to preserve the hard sound of c. 

13. Eight common nouns ending in o preceded by 
a consonant form their plurals by adding es: echo, 
hero, negro, no, potato, tomato, tornado, torpedo; 
also the game of dominoes, usually jingoes, and the 



68 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Scotch jo. Most others must be os, and all others 
may be. The rule is usually given the other way 
round, but there is dictionary warrant for os in 
every case except as stated above. In all our dic- 
tionaries os is understood when no plural is indi- 
cated. 

n — CONFUSIONS 

1. Certain, captain, and villain often appear with 
the i before the a — and then reappear frequently 
after you have had ruffian and Christian exhibited. 

2. There is no generalization for the el and le 
nouns. The best I can do is to make sure of a few 
common ones in el, heading the list with angel. 

3. An apostrophe shows where letters are omit- 
ted; no letters are added to form an abbreviation. 
Could anything be simpler? Could a sensible child 
ever require a second caution about e and no e in 
haven't and didn't? He could. Many require five 
or ten. 

4. Use no apostrophe for the possessive of a per- 
sonal pronoun — its, yours, hers, theirs. Its is the 
one most commonly wrong. Whose is difficult for 
some to acquire. Indefinites {one, another, etc.) 
have the apostrophe. Be cautioned in advance about 
a way some children have of putting an apostrophe 
into a plain plural. 

5. There is a strong tendency to hyphenate certain 
solid words, especially together, altogether, without, 
and nevertheless. 

6. In view of what I know after eighteen years 
of experience I think the value of the miscellaneous 
hints in this paragraph is not less than twenty dol- 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 69 

lars. One boy with a good mind persisted through 
a whole year in writing omit with two m's in spelling 
lessons. Oppinion is a parallel case. Boys from 
most cultured families will most marvelously per- 
sist in prehaps and preformance-. Boys who have 
known ex and capio for three years will in English 
sometimes except an invitation. For school pur- 
poses affect is a verb and effect is a noun ; never put 
them together for 'comment. "Don't despair; we 
can destroy the enemy" may teach three fearsome 
words with one effort. Avoid any exhibiting of 
forms that do not exist, like diden't, caption; it is 
dangerous to write occured or picnicing on the board 
unless they are audibly derived as strange monsters 
from cure and ice; if you hope to teach angel, do not 
write angle in that recitation. Pupils are mentally 
stone-deaf to the difference between occasion 
and occassion, picnicking and picnicing; only by 
forcing them to use their tongues, by making them 
say cassion, by insisting that they pronounce that 
wonderful new word occassion, will you get any- 
where at all. A boy will calmly pronounce picnicing 
in the orthodox way ; he has not felt the appeal until 
you make him say successively ice, icing, nicing, pic- 
nicing, or mice, micing, mimicing; he will balk at that 
last step and be unable to pronounce his own spell- 
ing. Turnes is not very common; showes is fairly 
frequent; askes flourishes in its loneliness with a 
vigor that you will finally learn to stand in awe of. 
Supprise has more lives than a cargo of Kilkenny 
cats. Led has no life in it ; only by constant nourish- 
ment and zealous care can you keep it breathing. 
Alright is as resistless as Tammany, and for aught 
T can see is going to establish itself; it defines topp 



16 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

in my German lexicon and appeared in Scribner's 
for April, 1915. 

7. All displays of erroneous forms are danger- 
ous. "Wrong idioms have to be spoken and discussed, 
for they are often met in real life. The wrong spell- 
ing is very seldom seen in real life. Don't show it. 

8. Always require the hyphens in such compound 
adjectives as six-cylinder, snow-clad, easy-going. It 
is marvelous to see how pupils who persistently 
omit this necessary link will refuse to give up the 
useless hyphen in today and will persist in to-gether 
and with-out. As to other compounds custom is 
variable ; it is a matter of how old and familiar they 
are. Baseball has long been solid ; basketball is very 
recent. You can find no rules and you need not 
worry; but encourage the hyphen, especially when 
the second part acts on the first (a pile-driver is 
for driving piles) ; and encourage the solid form if 
it is at all permissible. ' ' Close up your compounds ' ' 
is a good motto. 

9. Some groups of forms cannot be reduced to 
a rule. There is a whole book devoted to able and 
ible — without any resulting formula. Until some 
patient genius can phrase an inclusive statement 
about ance and ence we must be lenient with inde- 
pendance, or depend on special emphasis for such 
of this class as are being used constantly. Capital- 
ization is not worth worrying about beyond the most 
obvious and general rules. For example, the prob- 
lem of the h's in "God's in His heaven" is hardly 
worth comment, but the / in "We came to an Inn" 
deserves censure. 

10. At this point I am expected to plead for 
simplified spelling, but it is hard to be interested in 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 71 

such a slight revolution. I have no prejudice against 
any amount of new forms; allow boys to amuse 
themselves with thru even if they know nothing else 
about reformation. But neither can I get up enthu- 
siasm ; for so few of our troubles in secondary work 
are touched by the proposed changes ; the Board is 
not altering describe and separate and too. Their 
program might remove five per cent of my troubles, 
but might very likely add five per cent; because 
(here is the great point) most pupils are almost 
deaf to these phonetic differences that are as audible 
to philologists as the loud-sounding sea. 

If thirty very familiar words are dictated for a 
spelling lesson, it is nonsense to mark off only five 
per cent for each wrong word. That would be 
encouraging carelessness. Ten per cent would hardly 
afford much discouragement. Twenty per cent is 
mild enough for early in the year. Nothing is too 
strict after several reviews. This is not harshness, 
however ; it is true kindness ; for lenient marking is 
like saying "Naughty, naughty!" to a burglar. 

Suppose you have put a class through all these 
common forms by making them copy the lists from 
the board, keep them in a notebook, and review them 
several times. Then you will do well to begin a 
campaign of dictating sentences, for the pupil who 
spells replies in a list of twenty words may spell 
reply s when his attention is distracted by ideas like 
this : "It is surprising how he loses his self-control. 
If his rich uncle asks whether the moon is made of 
green cheese, he blushes, hangs his head, and replies 
that he never was there." Use whimsical or lively 
or colloquial sentences. Get up little paragraphs 
that tell an anecdote. Read these entirely through 



72 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

first, then dictate slowly in small sections. Dicta- 
tion of this sort can be made to review points of 
idiom and punctuation. 

Mark the misspelled words and return the paper. 
The errors must be corrected. Now, here is a small 
point that counts for much: Don't allow each word 
to be written out ten times. That seems not to 
accomplish anything. I know of a teacher's requir- 
ing a boy to write out since five hundred times in 
the afternoon — and finding that in the evening the 
boy had not learned how to spell since. Require a 
list of the misspelled words; require this list to be 
written ten times. The reason why this is a better 
method is (I am guessing) that when the pupil begins 
his second list his mind has been off on other business, 
has had to attend to paid, cautious, and extremely; 
so that when it recurs to luckily it has to notice all 
over again, has to focus once more on what has been 
out of sight. 

Strange as it may seem, this chapter is not 
intended to discourage, but to furnish comfort. It 
is better to know what kind of difficulty we are 
encountering. Thor was filled with chagrin at his 
failure to lower a big drinking-horn; he was com- 
forted when it was explained to him that the horn 
was attached to the ocean. Spelling is not a mere 
dish at the feast of learning; it taps the untried 
deeps of psychology. Don't grow black in the face 
and strain frantically when you find it so weirdly 
impossible to get rid of dissapear. Keep cheerful. 
You can get fair results with a fair amount of work. 

If parents or a principal twit you because your 
pupils spell poorly — show them that " since" story. 

Probably the next teacher you consult after read- 



INTENSIVE SPELLING 73 

ing this chapter will smile and tell you that there are 
many spelling cranks in our profession; that the 
dryasdusts are by instinct insistent on this soulless 
littleness. But observe that my notions have been 
imposed by a wisdom from above. The readers of 
Yale entrance papers used to be instructed to con- 
dition any candidate — no matter what graces t of 
style and appreciation he showed — if in the course 
of an hour's writing he had misspelled four words. 
Freshman themes at Illinois are conditioned for two 
misspellings.. Those are high authorities on the 
essentials of an English training. Their voices must 
touch our trembling ears. They know what they 
are talking about. 



CHAPTER IV 

WHAT GRAMMAE IS ALL ABOUT 

That closing remark about spelling is a good open- 
ing for the chapter on the most jejune of all subjects 
— English grammar. In 1909 the National Com- 
mittee sent a questionnaire to schools and colleges, 
as a basis for recommendations about entrance 
requirements. One topic was : Shall there be a sep- 
arate test in grammar? Only 45 per cent of the 
schools favored it, while 60 per cent of the colleges 
voted aye. This was not " Shall we have a gram- 
mar requirement 1 ?", but "Shall we have a separate 
test?" The college instructor who is indifferent 
about that kind of foundation is a rarity. If he has 
anything at all to do with composition, he soon finds 
out what mischief is caused by ignorance of the ele- 
mentary anatomy of the mother-tongue. Plenty of 
secondary teachers are indifferent about grammar, 
giving only a grudging assent to a review in the first 
year of the high school ; but the men higher up vote 
a heartfelt and almost unanimous yes. 

This sort of contest about living soul-stuff and 
dead mind-stuff is as old as any art. But the archi- 
tects and painters and musicians have been wiser 
than modern teachers of English. In a volume of 
criticism of some famous painters, written by a 
painter, there is little said about charm and emotion 
and loveliness and depth of feeling. Howells makes 

74 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 75 

a remark in some novel about the pitiful quality of 
this emotion-talk that a non-painter uses in com- 
menting on a picture. No — what the professional 
notes is the selecting of boards, the mixing of colors, 
the deftness in outlining, the study of lighting and 
perspective. An art teacher (I speak ignorantly, 
but will take the hazard) insists on a foundation 
of anatomy and mechanical drawing and sketching 
dull plaster models — dry and soulless exercises. A 
good music teacher works with finger exercises — dry 
and soulless. Your architect must be drilled in stress 
and strain and shear, which are perfectly arid, 
unlovely things. 

It is much more than a comparison to say : A good 
language teacher must lay a dry and soulless founda- 
tion. That is, considered in itself it is unlovely; 
considered with a view to what is to rise above, it 
is beautiful. Did you ever look at a great pit where 
an architect was basing a sky-scraper? It is ugly 
and joyless. But it is the only way to secure those 
lofty, decorative cornices. 

If the teacher of any art desiccates his own soul, 
or if he loses sight of what lies beyond and above, 
or if he blinds his pupils to the real goal of 
endeavor — that is a sad affair. Many enthusiasts 
about English grammar have doubtless lost the 
vision. Yet even that form of earnest blindness — 
if the choice had to be made — is better than the effort 
to be artistic without cellar walls or sound notions 
of perspective. 

The first chapter speaks about the danger of this 
artistic conception of English. We can seldom lift 
our eyes so high. A few boys and girls study paint- 
ing or the violin because of special ambition or tal- 



76 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ent ; every boy and girl must study English. We must 
teach such plain and fundamental stuff as all can 
learn. We must instruct in those mechanics which 
every novelist is keenly conscious of when he forms 
sentences (he may not have a set of names handy), 
which the orator felt in every period, which no 
builder of the lofty rhyme can disregard — and 
which the ordinary high-school pupil has no true 
perception of. 

Inspiring any young spirit is so dazzling a hope 
that few can look at it without blinking. It is a hope 
that sometimes beguiles teachers into the bog of 
shoddy work. As a matter of fact we are safe if we 
take Cardinal Newman 's ideal : 

I hold very strongly that the first step in 
intellectual training is to impress upon a 
boy's mind the idea of science, method, 
order, principle, and system; of rule and 
exception, of richness and harmony. This 
is commonly and excellently done by making 
him begin with grammar. 

We discover that two practical demands are made 
of us. First, that we furnish a simple basis of gram- 
matical notions on which teachers of other languages 
can work. This much they have a right to expect. 
It is a minor consideration and has little to do with 
determining our aims; but sometimes you will do 
well to find out what names and classifications are 
used in Latin and modern-language classes, so as 
not to have needless differences. The confusion in 
terminology used to be so great that a national com- 
mittee was appointed to draw up recommendations 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 77 

for uniformity. Their report,* a 60-page pamphlet, 
may be of some help to you if you are not perplexed 
by the array of formalities. 

The other demand ought to underlie every plan, 
every detail that is taken up : Build a foundation for 
Composition. If this is constantly in view, you will 
have no fear that you are teaching a formal subject. 
"Formal" is the word. So damning is the epithet 
that some of us hardly dare mention syntax approv- 
ingly, for fear we shall be considered unfit to 
commune with those that are of purer fire. 

We cannot do more than dimly guess what horrors 
would be revealed if we could gather into one report 
a five-minute record from every grammar recitation 
in the United States on a certain day. Willie in 
Concord would be rehearsing the quaint truth that 
"The definite article the points out one or more 
particular objects as distinct from others of the 
same kind." Susie in San Diego would briskly 
declare that "Shall and should are often used in the 
second and third persons in subordinate clauses to 
express volition which is not that of the subject." 
Perhaps thousands of children are learning the six 
special irregularities of weak verbs, and hundreds 
may be memorizing the ninety-six prepositions. 

How could we expect that these crimes of ped- 
agogy would not be committed? The rules and lists 
are given; they are surely not mere ornaments; 
there is nothing to indicate that they are for refer- 
ence only; the teacher will not rashly infer that they 
are incitements to evil; not a hint is given that one 

* It may be obtained by sending 20 cents to the secretary of the 
N. E. A., Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the Report of the Joint Commit- 
tee on Uniform Grammatical Nomenclature. 



78 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

page is more valuable than another. If, for example, 
we find twelve pages of shall and would, and one and 
a half pages of predicate nominative, it is a fair 
inference that the one subject is eight times as valu- 
able as the other. Teachers do so understand the 
emphasis. They must suppose that a renowned pro- 
fessor has proportioned his matter according to 
some well-considered scheme. Indeed, the preface 
says that the book is "a means for continuous 
study." Apparently the author — and all other 
authors — believes that foreign plurals are as impor- 
tant as passive voice ; and that an analysis of adverb 
clauses as concessive, future conditional, etc., is 
three times as important as the matter of whether 
a clause is adverbial. The exercises indicate that 
as much drill ought to be given on indirect questions 
as on nominative cases. 

Yet every secondary teacher of experience knows 
that "continuous study" is fearfully wrong. In the 
first place, he suspects that such classifications as 
Abstract Nouns and Ordinal Numerals are of small 
value in themselves. He knows, in the second place, 
that time spent on genders and potential phrases 
is robbing a class of thorough instruction in funda- 
mentals. For he realizes, in the third place, how 
long and hard is the process of making one gram- 
matical truth take root. (Has any grammarian 
ever realized that years of repetition may not per- 
suade a pupil to use we shall in the plainest of in- 
dicative statements? Not even the writers of our 
latest rhetoric can say we should.) As a teacher 
becomes more familiar with these rudimentary diffi- 
culties, he learns the necessity of spending more 
time on them, for he believes, fourthly, that they are 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 79 

important. So, leaving long stretches of text quite 
untouched, he concentrates on rudiments. He does 
not pretend that his wisdom is greater than the 
author's, is perplexed at finding all authors against 
him; but the facts of his little campaign are clear 
before him, and without disputing the Higher Strat- 
egy he abandons it and develops his own small plans. 

The criterion by which he abandons or attacks is 
this: Whatever seems essential in a rational pro- 
gram of teaching composition is to be taken up 
thoroughly. If our combined wisdom should finally 
decide that nothing grammatical really functions 
in the art of making good sentences, that a knowl- 
edge of syntax is not comparable to perspective in 
painting or to finger-exercises in music, then the 
study of grammar shall surely die, because it will 
have so little excuse for living. The question is to 
a certain extent debatable. I have not the least 
doubt that a great deal of effort as expended now- 
adays is a dead waste, for we don't frame sentences 
by grammatical analysis. But above a certain point 
a teacher cannot convey information about how to 
make good sentences or avoid poor ones unless the 
pupils understand syntax. It is generally believed 
today — I can see no possible reason for not believ- 
ing — that a study of the simpler principles is neces- 
sary as a basis for rhetoric, that most matters of 
classifying forms are of very slight use. 

The most elementary but most incorrigible error 
in composition is the failure to know the difference 
between a fraction of a sentence and two whole sen- 
tences. "No amount of ordinary correction seems 
sufficient to eradicate it," says the University of 
Illinois. The "half-sentence fault" and "comma 



80 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

fault" can be almost rooted out from an entire class 
of pupils three years below college grade by an 
attack based on grammar. If it can be done other- 
wise — say by prolonged drill in " sentence sense" 
without any reference to clauses, without reference 
to the difference between where and there, he and 
who — then that method of success ought to be pub- 
lished. I have never succeeded — that is, with a 
whole class — except by drill in clauses. "What is 
a dependent clause! Like what parts of speech are 
clauses used?" When a pupil has finally learned to 
tell readily whether these groups of words are used 
like nouns, like adjectives, or like adverbs, he can be 
drilled in pointing them, will call himself stupid when 
he goes wrong on a theme, and will, if marked 
severely enough, quit one kind of half-sentence fault. 
A similar drill with verbals is necessary to remove 
another kind. 

If every teacher had clearly in mind when he took 
up personals and relatives that his business was to 
undermine sentence-errors, he would know how much 
to skip and where to dwell. He would care nothing 
for gender, person, and number, for thou wast, for 
"self -pronouns." He would care much to show how 
a relative is dependent, how it and its clause can be 
removed bodily without destroying the sentence. He 
would be interested in nominative and objective, for 
he would be looking forward to the study of noun 
clauses, to the time when pupils should see a that 
clause as subject or object, not to be pointed even 
by a comma — much less by a period. His heart could 
firmly endure all the "formal" drill, because he 
would know that it was not formal at all, but was 
living rhetorical substance. He could have visions 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 81 

of shapely sentences rising from the welter, could 
hear old Effectiveness blow his wreathed horn — and 
would not be in the least forlorn. 

Suppose that we find on a theme: "Colonel Sell- 
ers was a peculiar man, if he happened to make any 
money, he would immediately give it away. ' ' What 
appeal are we to make? Doubtless a gifted teacher 
of long experience, who despises "formal" gram- 
mar, can devise a way of explaining that the condi- 
tional money-making looks forward to the statement 
about spending, and that there are two separate 
statements, and that a semicolon is necessary — thus 
avoiding the horrid nomenclature. But he is only 
doing without names what we average teachers, 
appealing to literal minds, do with names. Grant 
that his result is better for the soul of a bright pupil ; 
we have still to ask : What about the total of good to 
be obtained by a thousand ordinary teachers who 
attempt to follow him in dealing with a hundred 
thousand ordinary pupils'? The question is of the 
greatest moment, yet national councils have 
hardly begun to ask it, and the answer will 
be long in doubt. My own guesses are (1) that only 
a small percentage of teachers make for themselves 
any complete explanation of what a sentence-error 
is, (2) that most of them have a horror of a gram- 
matical treatment, (3) that in avoiding the clause 
drill they wander amid a tangle of impressionism, 
not guiding pupils to clear understanding. In brief: 
The unusual teacher's success is due (though he 
may not know it) to an understanding of clauses; 
the novice fails because he is ignorant of how to 
handle clauses. 

The most disastrous ignorance in the realm of 



82 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

clauses is a misapprehension of the nature of the 
so-called ' 'connectives." A teacher who knows how 
to distinguish in his own practice between independ- 
ent adverbs and real conjunctions, who can use semi- 
colons with the former and commas with the latter, 
may never have so formulated his knowledge that he 
can present a scheme of it to others. He cannot find 
a clear analysis in any grammar. The grammatical 
surveys in rhetorics are misleading, indicating that 
the adverbs then and consequently are as subordi- 
nating as when and so that. One admirable text 
lumps together yet and indeed as connectives "before 
which a semicolon is preferable." This is just as 
untrue as to teach young people that sleep is "pref- 
erable" before morning and evening. Pupils must 
be taught that indeed is as independent as it, that yet 
is a conjunction like but, so that they may know 
assuredly that a semicolon is necessary with one 
word and is never essential with the other. This is 
the fact of normal composition in schools, just as it 
is the fact of a normal pupil's life that he must sleep 
before morning and may sleep in the afternoon if 
peculiar circumstances make it advisable. 

I know by bitter experience how petty, how con- 
troversial, this appears to artistic minds. A dozen 
times since I began this chapter I have thought, 
"What's the use? You might as well try to interest 
this inexperienced teacher in the rat-proofing of New 
Orleans." And that very simile has given me heart 
to take up the pen again. For diseases that waste 
our national vigor can be contended against only 
after some dirty-aproned physician has dissected 
rattus or stegomyia. My laboratory may smell of 
dead yets and indeeds, but I verily believe that they 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 83 

are the carriers of dread contagion, and that if we 
know about them we shall give up exorcism and fumi- 
gation, and shall gain health and prosperity by ex- 
terminating pests. Half the college students in the 
country are debilitated in their sentence-making 
organ. Is this a visitation of divine wrath? an 
undiagnosable illness ? a " miasma ' ' against which we 
should burn sulphurous wrath? or an unescapable 
contagion which we ought to alleviate by a diet of 
literary ambrosia? My test-tubes assure me that 
the plague is directly traceable to a bacillus, ignoran- 
tia grammatica. I have demonstrated it on tens of 
thousands of themes ; it always breeds true ; its pres- 
ence in a human brain always develops sentence- 
errors ; when it is removed from a pupil, he no longer 
writes sentence-errors. My anti-toxin is not a 
panacea. It no more produces graceful sentences 
than any specific remedy causes general bodily 
vigor. It does no more than rid the system of one 
malady. 

I have no recipe for increasing the mental robust- 
ness of the race. Just as it may be true that our 
average of physical fitness has been lowered by arti- 
ficial aids against disease, so it may be true that 
the injection of grammatical accuracy results in the 
ultimate weakening of esthetic vitality. I have never 
observed the least indication of such after-effects, 
nor can I conceive that they will occur. But that 
point is not here at issue. Nor are we debating 
whether sentence-errors really signify in the sight 
of Heaven. To me personally the difference between 
a comma and a semicolon is less than nothing. I 
only feel that if a youth is unable to grasp the dis- 
tinction he is mentally unworthy of a diploma — or 



84 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

else his teacher is unworthy of a salary. I note 
that the colleges and tax-payers demand that such 
knowledge shall be imparted, and that we are not 
meeting the demand successfully. What follows is 
not a symposium of heart-throbs, but a method of 
deserving a hundred dollars a month. 

An inevitable cry of dismay must be forestalled: 
"Oh, this is an apotheosis of drugs! This will 
encourage novices to herd their pupils out of the 
pleasant pastures and confine them amid antidotes 
and syringes." Peace! No medical thesis ever 
turned a lover of green fields into a worshiper of 
microbes. Anyone who can be turned from the 
paths of good sense by this chapter is already unfit 
to teach English. 

One principle is to be forever in mind: Pupils 
must know what words do in sentences. That 
"Colonel Sellers was a peculiar man, if he happened 
to make money" will illustrate. What does if do? 
It joins its clause to would give. A pupil who has 
been taught to find out instantly what if does is pre- 
pared to understand why the comma before it is the 
saddest of blunders. Logically the comma is right, 
because what follows is subordinate in thought, 
explaining how the Colonel was peculiar. The 
Frenchman may indicate this subordination by a 
comma. We are not allowed to. Another illustra- 
tion is "A plague upon them, they're rotten." 
Unless a person knows how plague is used there is 
no way to inform him that a mere comma is not 
acceptable after them. Our pointing in such cases 
depends upon grammatical dependence or independ- 
ence. And those arbitrary syntactical distinc- 
tions are never revealed by any amount of drill 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 85 

in such mental states as "non-committal present 
conditional. ' ' 

In its normal use if is always a conjunction, but we 
should discredit the notion that a word is any- 
thing in itself. The letters t, h, and e sometimes 
form an adverb and sometimes an article. To teach 
that "concerning may be classed as a preposition" 
is to damage the youthful mind, because it conveys 
the impression that a word is something in itself; 
whereas it really is a preposition if it does preposi- 
tional work. "What does it do? Then what is it V ' 
Any deviation from this line of attack is turning a 
poor child's logic topsy-turvy. To expound "infini- 
tive clauses" or "infinitives as modifiers" or 
"intransitive passive" (sic) is to double on our own 
tracks, eluding and baffling the pupil. Very few 
English forms are anything in themselves. Ashed 
is nothing till you know what it does, but must be 
seen in action, to sleep is probably not an infinitive — 
and so on forever. There is hardly such a thing as 
an intransitive verb. I read in my text that i ' Roared 
what!" would be an absurdity, but Shakespeare 
made somebody ' ' roar these accusations forth. ' ' To 
classify roar as intransitive and then to say "here 
used transitively" is to spoil our own efforts. 
"What does it do? Then it is transitive here." 

This truth about verbs is hardly credible to some 
persons of middle age who were brought up with 
texts, modeled after the Latin, for in Latin a verb 
is usually transitive or intransitive in itself; it is 
that kind of verb. Reference to dictionaries is decep- 
tive because they seem to announce that a verb is 
by nature one kind or the other. But try to find a 
dozen verbs that are not entered as both transitive 



86 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

and intransitive. Such lugged-in Latin notions 
originally distorted our texts and are still potent 
causes of misstatement and wrong emphasis. The 
treatment of mood has been a process of forcing 
square English facts into round Latin holes. Think 
of defining case of English nouns as "variation in 
form. ' ' Even the great and sensible Matzner devoted 
pages to the genders of our nouns, yet gender hardly 
exists in English. Since Latin grammars display 
elaborate schemes of conjugation, our grammars 
have done the same ; we have paraded principal parts 
and declensions and all manner of paradigms as if 
English forms were unknown and our task was to 
commit them painfully to memory. Every pupil has 
known the forms all his life. What he does not know 
is how to describe the functions of words. 

Not all classification of forms is worthless, but 
learning about kinds is of small value compared with 
learning about functions, and the difficulties of teach- 
ing a few necessities of syntax are so great that no 
ordinary school has time for anything more. Not 
one of us realizes how hard it is to make a whole 
class able to distinguish between subject, object, and 
predicate nominative. Scores of times I have seen 
normally bright pupils in a third year of review trip- 
ping over "up flew the windows" or learning all 
over again why a gerund is not a participle. 

What are those few necessities ? We might almost 
reply, "Whatever will explain clauses." You can 
never know the nature of clauses until you under- 
stand the uses of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and 
relative pronouns. You cannot tell a clause from 
an independent sentence until you have studied per- 
sonals. You cannot know about nouns and pronouns 






WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 87 

except in connection with transitive and intransi- 
tive verbs. Phrases will always be clauses until you 
study prepositions. Clauses will never be clauses 
until you investigate conjunctions. And there you 
are. Through every inch of the drudgery you can 
see clauses. Familiarity with them will breed some 
ease in writing complex sentences, and so make style 
less childish. Knowledge of them will put counter- 
feit sentences out of circulation. In your toiling 
with subject and object you have a purpose, a pre- 
vision of how you are going to destroy such monsters 
as "What you say, doesn't count, it's what you do." 
Ellipses are not futile puzzles if you are providing 
against "Why not, there's no danger." You can 
even behold above the meanest adverb a light which 
shall show young intellects why they must not let a 
weak adverb clause stand all alone between periods. 

What have you supposed you were going to do? 
Raise a dust for no particular purpose f If you know 
that every motion is going to help the next genera- 
tion to command a more decent style, shan't you 
feel that your occupation is less like devilish goose- 
stepping and more like godly labor? 

Your year's course begins with recognizing the 
parts of speech. They are not meaningless counters, 
but parts of a vital physiology. Definitions are 
merely brief statements of uses: a word used as a 
name, a word whose business is to modify nouns and 
pronouns, a word that has power to make a state- 
ment. Then you take up each in turn. Disregard- 
ing such relativities as "cognate object", "object 
of service," you attend only to real uses — subject, 
vocative, indirect object, adverbial objective. In 
themselves these topics are exactly as inspiring as 



88 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

a heap of bones ; but a good physician can see all the 
way from the power of naming bones to the power 
of saving lives. Verily so can you if your eye is 
not dim. "When Thomas learns that Royal George 
is not the object of down went, and then for three 
successive weeks hears that Barbara Frietchie is not 
the object of sprang, a wonderful conception begins 
to grow in Thomas's mind: "I needn't begin every 
sentence of my own with the subject." Incidentally 
he will be prepared to adopt such conventions as 
using commas with vocatives or appositives, and 
not using them before objective predicates. 

Must we hack our way through all these construc- 
tions! Probably yes — alas! Why? Because unless 
Thomas is responsible for every use he will not 
understand you some day when he has written ' ' The 
Judge was tall, dark-brown hair," or "When a boy 
is seriously hurt in football, even a broken arm or 
leg." You will point reproachfully at hair or arm 
and ask its construction; he will reply, "I guess 
that's one you didn't teach us." 

Accept any explanation that could possibly be 
deduced by a rational process. In "It cost a dollar" 
the noun might be called adverbial. And keep in 
mind always that the analysis which long habit 
makes obvious to us is essentially hard. Can you 
present off-hand an irresistible demonstration of the 
antipodal functions of the two following verbs? 
"She seems a goddess", "She resembles a goddess." 

Thence to those words that take the place of 
nouns. All the parade of ' ' compound ", " demonstra- 
tive", "indefinite," is a show of phantoms, only to 
be glanced at. "What do they do?" Just what 
nouns do — except those relatives. Everything about 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 89 

pronouns is too easy, too vacuous to spend effort on 
compared with those relatives. They are weak by 
nature, small, parasitic, unable to stand alone. They 
can be graphically charted by writing them in very 
small letters on a line slanting down from a big 
antecedent. This is not kindergartening ; it is a 
primal fact about sentences. If a child establishes 
the mental habit of drawing a ring about a relative 
clause, he can always corral his relative construc- 
tions ; if he has formed no such habit, he will be for- 
ever turning loose upon society such mavericks as 
"I have something here that as long as I keep it, 
I'll be unhappy." Nor have I observed that such a 
sense of restraint ever stiffened a lively style in the 
least. Would Stevenson have been more charming 
if he had allowed his clauses to stampede ? You will 
never waste time by additional exercises in relatives, 
for no class ever knew them infallibly. It is doubt- 
ful whether you should touch upon relatives as 
descriptive and restrictive. The distinction is the 
most delicate and difficult in the whole field of rhe- 
toric, the hardest to formulate, the hardest for illit- 
erate minds to grasp. It must be mastered before 
clauses can be properly pointed, but "touching 
upon" will accomplish nothing. Unless you can pre- 
sent it fully, you had best not take it up at all. It 
is a rhetorical distinction. 

As you have had nothing to do with "adjective 
pronouns," so you will not speak of "pronominal 
adjectives. ' ' We must play no game of now-you-see- 
it-and-now-you-don't. By their functions ye shall 
know them. With the exception of possessives. To 
call these adjectives might help modern-language 
instructors, but it is doubtful whether we can afford 



90 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

to do so; for it creates the contradiction that pos- 
sessive nouns are nouns, but that possessive pro- 
nouns are adjectives. And consistency is precious 
in elementary grammar. We must advance con- 
sistently to participles. If you realize that they are 
the goal, and that a knowledge of them will prevent 
sentence-errors, you can handle adjectives with zeal. 

In adverbs a definition will be useful. (You will 
find that occasionally adverbs really modify preposi- 
tions and conjunctions: "right on that spot, stand- 
ing just where he told us. ' ') You will feel very little 
interest in the different kinds of meanings, or in 
irregular comparisons, or yes and no, or expletive 
there, or uses of the superlative. You are concerned 
with "What is it doing?" You will wish you could 
tear out that leaf that tells about "relative adverbs," 
for it exposes a child to the plague, abuses and mis- 
leads him. They are conjoining words. Interroga- 
tive adverbs are adverbs. 

The ideal text would alternate lessons in verbs 
and constructions of nouns, for they are inseparable 
matters. You must join what the text has sundered. 
Four-fifths of your time on verbs will be spent in 
distinguishing betwen intransitive and passive, 
object and predicate nominative; one-fifth on all 
other matters. For sequence of tenses in composi- 
tion will never be influenced by parsings, and sub- 
junctive mood is not defined alike by any two 
grammarians. A statement or question of fact is 
indicative, a command is imperative, a mere condi- 
tion of mind is subjunctive — no more but so. And 
be willing to leave mood quite untaught until you 
have made doubly sure of the necessities. 

Prepositions — what delight have they promised 






WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 91 

you? You can find them almost inspiring if you 
anticipate coherent modifiers and the clearer notions 
of clauses. A phrase is always a clause to Thomas, 
and until he can distinguish you have no language 
by which to explain some matters of arranging, vary- 
ing, and pointing. It is not that grammar makes 
good sentences, but that it makes possible the com- 
municating of ideas about forming sentences. So 
your object is to delimit prepositions from adverbs 
on the one hand and conjunctions on the other. They 
always have objects, never modify anything, but 
form phrases that modify. Like is not ' *■ an adjective 
used like a preposition"; it is a preposition. You 
never weary of inquiring what the object is and what 
the phrase modifies. And you look into the seeds of 
time and see an epoch when "in which he sat in" 
will be monstrous, and when a phrase will not be a 
sentence. 

There is a sense in which all this study is prelim- 
inary to conjunctions, for conjunctions mean clauses, 
and clauses mean the approach — as near as mechan- 
ics can go — to decent sentences. Your energy will 
all be directed at "What does it do?" One form of 
answer, one invariably, must be insisted on; any 
other will leave the class in a haze: "It attaches its 
clause to one word." It may join a modifier or an 
object, but only when we know to what one ivord and 
for what purpose can we answer ' ' Then what kind 
is it?" When and where are no guarantee of what 
the clause is. "How is the clause used?" In "Use 
6uch powers as you have" as joins a clause to the 
adjective such ; therefore the clause is adverbial, no 
matter what your text declares. It is doubtful 
whether as must ever be called a relative pronoun. 



92 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

There is in your text a section which ought to be 
excised by a national board of censorship. Some 
day it will be. It is that paragraph which asserts 
that some adverbs are conjunctions. Still is not a 
conjunction. However is not a conjunction — never 
in a secondary school. Nor is nevertheless nor more- 
over nor then. If this dictum is a flat denial of the 
whole thesis, then the thesis must go to smash. We 
face an ugly, illogical fact, a social taboo that is 
superior to all reason. The fact of custom is that 
we do not point these words with commas as we do 
though and unless. We place a deadly entanglement 
in the path of progress if we so much as whisper the 
possibility that these independent adverbs might in 
any event ever conceivably be called conjunctions. 
No, we must shout the contrary. And as we vocifer- 
ate we may see opening before us a highway of real 
sentences on which pupils may safely travel to that 
Promised Land in which there are no sentence- 
errors. 

A verbal used like an adjective is a participle; a 
verbal used like a noun is an infinitive. That ought 
to be the limit of definition, but unfortunately a 
National Committee asks us to call ing infinitives 
gerunds. So be it, then. But assure your class that 
the difference is purely formal, that you are dissect- 
ing only adjective uses and noun uses. Never swerve 
from that. Never use the confusing "participial 
infinitive" nor "infinitive clause" nor "infinitive 
modifiers," nor "complementary" nor "purpose"; 
spend little time on phrases, tenses, or "pure adjec- 
tive." Drive at "Is it noun or adjective?" Every 
infinitive is used like a noun: "complementary" is 
a direct object; "purpose" and "modifier" are 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 93 

objects of to, and the phrase modifies. ''Every par- 
ticiple must modify something. What is it? Why, 
then, is it dangling helpless in your sentence ? ' ' 

There is the program — to deal with no mere forms, 
to ask what words do, to keep before us the vision 
of better sentences. 

A text to put this into effect would have quite a 
different appearance from our present grammars. 
It would do in form what most experienced teachers 
do in practice: offer hardly any text, offer a thou- 
sand sentences to work with. Its few simple defini- 
tions would be mere titles for colloquial comment 
on a few principles. The comments would be brief, 
serving only to introduce the illustrations. And the 
illustrations would be nothing but introductions to 
the only part that counts — exercises. Probably nine- 
tenths of the book would be sentences so grouped as 
to afford easy preliminary drill on one topic, then 
on two topics mingled, every exercise including some 
sentences that contain no illustrations of the topic. 
This is not a policy of puzzles ; it is insurance against 
heedlessness — a highly important bit of tactics. The 
sentences would be taken mostly from stories and 
descriptions, so that they should seem human, some- 
what interesting, and so that their meaning should be 
obvious at first reading. We cannot reckon how 
unreal we have made grammar with our selections 
from Tennyson and Emerson. (And possibly have 
done something toward making literature odious.) 
It is more profitable to examine a live idiom like "I 
don't know who did it" than to whirl toward Azrael's 
outposts with "As night to stars, woe lustre gives 
to man." 

Does it sound like a program of easy incomplete- 



94 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ness? It would be quite the contrary. For it is 
harder to be thorough in a few fundamentals than 
to hurry through a thousand non-essentials; more 
complete to know all of something than to know only 
a little about some things. 

Does it sound like a great lot of work for a small 
result? It is true in one way that a year of drill 
in syntax does not furnish much useful knowledge; 
many a skilful writer who in the truest sense under- 
stands his mother-tongue knows nothing of gram- 
matical formulas and would not have his skill per- 
ceptibly increased by a course in syntax. Grammar 
drill actually counts for very little in training a pupil 
to use the language correctly, for there are very 
few opportunities (like "if I'd have known' ' or 
1 'between you and I") to appeal to reason. It is a 
fact that though a man has all knowledge of diagram- 
ing clauses, so that he can analyze unfalteringly the 
maziest sentence of Pater or James, he may never- 
theless be unable to compose one interesting period. 
In spite of the various hints given above as to how 
grammar may be applied for obviating careless con- 
structions, it must be admitted that such applications 
come only now and then, could be made without all 
the preparatory analysis. Grammar probably trains 
the intellect no better than a dozen other subjects 
that have greater cultural content. What on earth 
does grammar do? It prepares a pupil to 
learn when he has reached the end of a sentence and 
to be instructed in punctuating that sentence. Is 
that a small result ? It must look positively tiny to 
you; it appears insignificant to some experienced 
educators. That is because you measure size astro- 
nomically. To an astronomer the solution of a quad- 



WHAT GRAMMAR IS ABOUT 95 

ratic equation is an achievement about the size of a 
pea ; to a grade pupil it is larger than the moon. The 
child is trained for years, slowly advanced from one 
simplicity to another, before he can begin algebra. 
Some day the world will realize that we have been 
regarding the solution of written-sentence forma- 
tions from the astronomer's view-point, have been, 
as it were, taking subtraction for granted and merely 
glancing at decimals. As a result our children have 
only the dimmest notion of what a sentence is ; the 
children become youths in high school, and still have 
the dimmest notion of what a sentence is ; here they 
are exercised in the higher calculus of English with- 
out knowing what plain quadratics are ; and half of 
them proceed to college quaternions before some 
sensible director of freshman composition requires 
them to learn why x 2 + y 2 cannot be factored. As 
Professor Thomas of Minnesota says about ordinary 
college freshmen: "They have been left in total 
ignorance of the nature of a sentence. . . . The 
whole theory of punctuation still remains in worlds 
beyond their ken." Freshman instructors at Wil- 
liams have to devote the first weeks of the college 
year to drill in the rudiments of punctuation. And 
punctuation cannot be taught without a knowledge of 
clauses. 

If quadratics is a "small" result in mathematics, 
so is a knowledge of clauses "small" in English. 
Not otherwise. 



CHAPTEE V 

TEACHING GKAMMAK 

One precept must be graven in your mind : Noth- 
ing is true simply because your text says it is true. 
A marvelous collection could be made of untruths 
that have been solemnly rehearsed from one genera- 
tion to another. One example is Dr. Johnson's guess 
that "had rather" is a vulgarism — an absolute fals- 
ity that lived unresisted for a century and a 
quarter, has been thirty years a-dying, and is not 
dead yet. Only five years ago an Atlantic contrib- 
utor inveighed against the ignorance of an age which 
had no more feeling for grammatical propriety than 
to use ' l no one but me. ' ' She argued that ' * me ' ' was 
wrong. All such things-that-aren't-so arise from 
logical brains that argue. Grammar admits of no 
argument — at least Professor Whitney convinced 
most thinking Americans that it doesn't; and since 
his time a host of thinking professors have been 
beating into us the notion that reasoning about 
grammar is an utterly fatuous futility. Perhaps 
you have some conceptions about this or that usage 
as wrong "because. ' ' You will constantly encounter 
prepossessions against respectable idioms "because" 
of some ratiocination. The only way to know about 
respectability is to know the facts of usage — has it 
been, or is it now, commonly employed by educated 
people ? 

English grammar is always furnishing surprises, 
things you never thought of before. If you teach it 
twenty years, you will not get entirely beyond the 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 97 

unexpected. But the great body of usual explana- 
tions is not hard to acquire. The best guide for 
teachers that I happen to know is Grammar and Its 
Reasons by Mary H. Leonard. It is clear, sensible in 
its methods, remarkably complete, and always sound. 
The most thorough and reliable text is Whitney's 
Essentials of English Grammar, which, though 
designed as a textbook, is really a manual crammed 
full of information for the teacher. Kittredge and 
Farley's Advanced English Grammar, though mis- 
leading in some of its statements, records some 
facts of idiom that other authors have been too 
timorous to include. Armed with these three volumes 
you can bag almost any idiom that rears its fearsome 
head. Should you by any strange chance ever wish 
to go further in quest of facts from our literature, 
use Miitzner's three-volume Grammatik. Even if 
the German comment is hard to read, the great 
stores of quotations are easy — and they are what 
counts. Otto Jespersen's volumes of syntax (in 
English) will be another tremendous collection of 
quotations, very originally and entertainingly 
grouped. It may be many years before this is 
completed; the first volume (1914) does not cover 
much of the field. 

English constructions are hard to reduce to an 
orderly scheme. After, a person has been arranging 
and explaining them for five years he is astonished to 
find unsolved perplexities confrontinghim every year 
for the next five. They are specially numerous in 
common idioms and colloquial language. Be pre- 
pared to be "stuck" at any time. It is fatal to pre- 
tend knowledge, because you may make a pronounce- 
ment that will later be disastrous. The best way out 



98 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

is: "I've never thought of that. I want to make 
sure. I '11 tell you tomorrow. " If in the rush of a 
recitation you make a ruling that later recoils upon 
you and shows that you were wrong, acknowledge it. 
Get straight again. There is no other way to keep 
the respect of the class. But of course you must dis- 
play as little ignorance as possible. Often you can 
see the trouble coming and can avoid the encounter. 
Often the puzzle is of no value to the class, and you 
can say that you are omitting the oddities. Try to 
have it understood from the beginning that English 
syntax is not like arithmetic: a teacher of other 
subjects knows an answer to every question that can 
arise ; in every elementary grammar there are ques- 
tions that lexicographers cannot agree about. 

At many points in the course there will be options 
as to how you classify or explain. Make it clear to 
the class that some of the schemes are arbitrary, 
that the matter is handled otherwise in other books 
or other schools, but that for the sake of uniformity 
it is necessary to require some one scheme with any 
one class. Always try to give credit for, or at least 
to excuse, a recitation that shows an analysis which 
might have been taught somewhere in the world. 
Sensible headwork, even if the result is laughable, is 
better than mere devotion to an arbitrary standard. 
If a pupil says that trotting in "he went trotting 
along the sidewalk" is a modifier of went, this is 
a notion that has reality in it; it is not to be con- 
demned unless it conflicts with a standing, invariable 
ruling that participles never modify verbs. The 
word really does convey the impression that he went 
"in a trotting fashion"; it may truly be called 
adverbial, But we get a clearer, more consistent 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 99 

outline of English syntax if we insist that participles 
are always used like adjectives, and that hence 
trotting is a form of predicate adjective after 
went. 

This is one of hundreds of examples of how hard 
it is to frame a plain and consistent outline in which 
the "always" is not to be continually criss-crossed 
by the "sometimes, however." That undeviating 
outline is really a necessity. It does not narrow you 
or your subject or the pupil ; it is simply the skeleton 
of the Generally True; it is the support for gram- 
matical concepts. When it is mastered — and not 
before — a pupil is entitled to debate of might-bes 
and in-realities. You and the pupils will keep in a 
much happier frame of mind if you recognize that 
the stiff outline is a useful device, not a subject or 
an end in itself. 

The actual work with miscellaneous sentences is 
all that really counts. You need hundreds of them. 
Sometimes you will be driven to the use of other 
books for material, such as a history or even- an 
algebra or the Bible. Copious exercises is the word. 

A natural approach is to take a preliminary sur- 
vey of the different parts of speech in this order: 
nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, preposi- 
tions, conjunctions. It may be well to leave infini- 
tives and participles till later. This kind of work 
goes swimmingly. When the lesson is all about 
adjectives it is easy to select them. Even long verb 
phrases can be picked out handily when the lesson 
is all about verbs. Be warned that this is mere seem- 
ing, and that when you mix things up the class will 
seem to have got nowhere at all. 

"A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun." 



100 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Very well. Then the italicized words in the follow- 
ing are pronouns: "Each had his knapsack", "One 
never knows his own faults." Next we learn that 
"An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pro- 
noun," and we tackle the sentence: "Each man ran 
for the other side." Since we are concentrating on 
adjectives, we shall probably get fair results with 
each and other. But now we review a mix-up of pro- 
nouns and adjectives, encountering: "Each one had 
thought the others were lying about that other 
boat." Protests will be heard. "Yesterday we 
called each a pronoun." "The book says that each 
is a pronoun." 

You think that you will drive them to cover thus : 
"Yes, but what is a pronoun? How is one used? It 
doesn't modify some understood noun, does it? You 
couldn't say 'each one man/ could you? No. So it 
stands for a noun, then? Exactly. And what is a 
pronoun? Then owe must be a pronoun? "What does 
each do! Modifies one. Any word that modifies a 
pronoun is a — what? So each is an adjective." 

Isn't it easy? It is also easy to go through the 
rigmarole tomorrow, and next week, and next month. 
I have known bright boys to need a repetition after 
five months of almost daily megaphoning the same 
old idea. It seems a notion contrary to normal 
mental processes. A spade is a spade. If you use 
it for poking the fire it doesn't become a poker. A 
word ought in the nature of things to be something. 
This calling it one thing today and another tomorrow 
is not fair. 

How is it used in the sentence? Start out strong 
with that, and never let up. If a pupil, unprompted, 
by good headwork, argues that one modifies an 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 101 

understood noun, and so is an adjective, he ought to 
be commended. It could be so classified and taught. 
Even in the case of others, where an s is added that 
never is added to an adjective, it is better — early in 
the course, that is — to commend for a piece of real 
reasoning than to discredit for not taking the s into 
account. But when your system has been clearly 
announced, made clear by practice, then the reasoner 
must bow to the needs of uniformity. 

You come to adverbs. "An adverb is a word that 
modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb." 
Shortly you come upon : ' ' He got almost into port. ' ' 
The pupil reciting finds no adverb, and argues that 
almost modifies into, which is neither verb, adjective, 
nor adverb. Give him a cheer. A more stupid child 
could have guessed that almost modified got. The 
fact is that we really feel that it was "almost 
into, ' ' and not ' ' almost got. ' ' I think the definition 
needs extension. 

It is as hard to define a preposition as to state 
formally which your right hand is, yet it is almost as 
easy to distinguish between an adverb and a prepo- 
sition as between right and left. A preposition is 
suspiciously like an adverb ; it indicates time, place, 
etc., but it always has an object : ' ' That was just like 
him", "I sat next the door." It is well to insist 
that a preposition never modifies anything ; it is the 
prepositional phrase that modifies. 

A preliminary skirmish with conjunctions is bound 
to be unsatisfactory. The coordinating kind are 
easy, but the subordinating — those connectives that 
join clauses to single words — are a large subject and 
are not apprehended until after a good deal of work 
with clauses — of which more anon. 



102 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

The ''first time over" work you must make clear 
to the class is just such a general glance as a stranger 
in a big city might take by long street-car rides, or 
an explorer would try to get from some high hill. 
You could learn more rapidly about a maze of streets 
or a jungle if you first got a general idea of the lay 
of the land. 

One text, by an able man, proceeds from general 
notions of subject and predicate to particular syntax. 
Some able men do not believe in diagraming. Hardly 
one point in this chapter but is controverted or dif- 
ferently handled by a longer experience than mine. 
You will every week be forming convictions as to how 
you will go to work another year. That is right. 
But refuse to be guided by theories of what ought 
psychologically to be the best methods. Nothing is 
so false as a theory of how minds may be expected 
to work ; nothing is so true as sympathetic observa- 
tion of how they actually have struggled, of how this 
pedagogic trick got results and that one failed. 

The following job lot of comments, cautions, and 
tactics is selected on the basis of: What did I least 
understand when I began to teach? 

The most literate young mind I ever tried to in- 
struct — it read Chaucer late at night and it wrote 
masterful themes — could not be securely taught in a 
whole year of grammar drill the difference between 
a direct object and a nominative after to he. I 
shouted, "You cannot have an object of is" and 
whispered dramatically, "There is no such thing as 
an object of was." Even dull boys in the class 
learned to snicker with anticipatory pleasure if this 
lad was called on to give the construction of the noun 
in "This might have been a palace." To the end 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 103 

he never really conceded that the nouns after became 
and had been called were not objects.* I know a 
bright fellow who only four years before he became 
a teacher in a good preparatory school was still 
prone to put an accusative after sum. Every fall 
we have a class of small boys (corresponding to the 
eighth grade) who are vigorously bombarded from 
the outset by forewarned teachers, both of Latin and 
English, with the refrain, "There is no such thing 
as an object of esse", li To be never can take an ob- 
ject." We look forward with assurance to the neces- 
sity of keeping up the fire for months. This is an 
unco thing in pedagogy. There must be a better way 
to teach predicate nominative. If you can discover 
the way, you will benefit mankind. 

That word after the verb always looks like an ob- 
ject. "Up flew the windows." The best formula 
to rescue tvindows from that secret power that 
"flew" them is to insist on answering the question, 
"Who or what flew?" Insist that before a pupil 
recites (it requires only a second or two) he shall 

ask himself the question, "Who or what ?" If 

you are told that in "Down sank the Eoyal George" 
Royal George is the object of sank, put your in- 
formant through this catechism: "What question 
did you ask yourself? Well, who or what did sink? 
Then what is the subject of sinkl Then in what case 
is Royal GeorgeV If you keep unflaggingly at this, 
you will be doing more for that group of young 
brains than merely showing them about a subject 
nominative. 

Nominative absolute (as in "the weather being 

* (Don't infer from that masterful theme-writer's case that gram- 
matical training is not of value for composition. Suspend judgment.) 



104 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

fine") can be handled with double effect after some 
study of participles. It is doubtful whether it should 
be taken up before. 

The possessive as an object of of ("that whim 
of my father's") is a queer thing. Announce that 
it is queer. For once the object of a preposition is 
not in the objective case. 

The clue to an indirect object is that it expresses 
"to or for whom" without a preposition. If "he 
handed me the card," me is an indirect object; if 
"he handed the card to me," me is the object of to. 
This is confusing to children who have been studying 
the Latin dative. 

An objective predicate ("They made him king") 
always occurs with a direct object, showing what that 
object was made to be, was called, etc. 

An adverbial objective ("We walked a mile") is 
usually a measure. "Do it some other way" is an- 
other species. Consider the two cases : "We weighed 
a pound of sand ", " The sand weighed a pound. ' ' In 
the first the pound is being weighed; in the second 
pound merely shows how much. 

An appositive is ' ' set alongside a noun or pronoun 
to explain it " ; it is "usually set off by commas ; it is 
"adponoed" to that other noun or pronoun. 

Personal and demonstrative pronouns give no par- 
ticular trouble, except for the two peculiar uses of 
it. Expletive it is a dummy subject; the real 
subject lurks on the other side of the verb. Imper- 
sonal it has no conceivable antecedent; there is 
no other subject. The only kink with interrogatives 
is, "You can't know the construction until you have 
put the question into the form of a statement." 
"Who are you?" becomes "You are who." Then 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 105 

we see that "who is the object of are," and are later 
led to see that it is predicate nominative. 

But relatives ! Suppose yourself, in a rather em- 
barrassing situation in which you are anxious to 
appear to advantage, confronted with this demand: 
"Form a congeries of postulates so arranged that 
number two, in which number one is involved in a 
limiting capacity, shall be involved in a limiting 
capacity in number three, which is to be unin- 
volved." There is nothing hard about that, because 
you have a complete set of linguistic notions into 
which you can promptly transpose these not unusual 
terms and, unless you are pitifully flustered, can ful- 
fill the demand in an instant. Yet the scholastic in- 
tangibility of it, if you can imagine it thrust upon 
some mature mind that had educated itself without 
knowledge of dependent clauses, may feebly illus- 
trate the lack of appeal which "relative clause" 
makes to the average fourteen-year-old boy. 

Draw a picture for him. It was in my third year 
of teaching that I rushed to the board, in a desperate 
mood, wrote in huge letters "THE MAN HAS 
GONE," and then, inside a loop connected to 
man, wrote in small letters "who was here." There 
was a graphic exhibit of the bigness and in- 
dependence of the main clause, and the small, ad- 
jectival bondage of the relative clause. I have used 
it ever since. 

This, like other eccentric schemes suggested in 
these pages, may not appeal to you. A man to whom 
I am much indebted once told me of a device which 
did not strike me favorably. I can't use it. But I 
should certainly have taken it up — should have taken 
up anything — if I had not had another. 



106 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Keep constantly before the class the essential idea 
that a clause contains a subject and verb, and is used 
like a single adjective, or a single adverb, or a single 
noun; that relative clauses are adjective clauses, be- 
cause they are always attached to, always modify, 
some noun or pronoun. Whenever you can make a 
pupil perceive this clearly you have conferred upon 
him a priceless gift — a bit more courage in tackling 
Shakespeare's sentences. 

You will moil in vain in the opening days with re- 
latives unless you follow the plan (or its equivalent 
in some shape) of "picking out the relative clause." 
"What is the clause?" must be the unfailing ques- 
tion. Consider "He who hesitates is lost. " The he 
and the who are forever going to be entangled until 
the pupil learns to ' ' take that clause out of the sen- 
tence," and to put it one side, like a dissected organ, 
and then — never till then — to examine its functions. 
At first your class will dig out "who hesitates is" 
and hold it up, all dripping, for scrutiny. Insist that 
we must have only one leg — not a leg + half a body. 
Which is, being interpreted, one subject and one 
verb, with their modifiers. (Or at first you may prac- 
tice on bare subject and verb.) 

When this dissection can be performed, then you 
may unfold the precious truth that the construction 
of a relative is always found in its clause, never is 
mixed in the least with any shred of the sentence 
outside that clause. After driving this home you 
may cautiously take the next step: A relative's 
gender, person, and number are always found en- 
tirely outside of the clause — i. e., they depend on the 
antecedent. 

A pupil can decide whether that is a relative by 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 107 

finding out whether it makes sense to substitute 
who or which. So far as I know it is never safe to 
trust him to decide in any other way. 

Relatives always seem to a class to be in apposi- 
tion with the antecedents. The answer is that they 
are not "put alongside of in the same construction," 
but are subjects or objects, are not in any sense 
appositives. 

Have nothing to do with sub-classes of adjectives. 
The use of classifying at all (and the same is true 
of adverbs) is slight. But it is necessary to get at 
the distinction between an adverb and a predicate 
adjective. If you are discussing "The heavens grew 
dark," don't argue that "dark is an adjective." 
Dark is nothing per se. How is it used? It doesn't 
describe the way in which the heavens grew; they 
didn't grow in a dark manner. They grew to be 
dark. So of seem, appear, look, become, etc. 

Waste no energy over such a retained preposition 
as ' ' This is being talked about. ' ' Never allow it to 
be called a part of the verb phrase; if it must be 
spoken of, it is more like an adverb — it has no object. 
Reserve your time and energy for the obvious prepo- 
sitional use in ' ' What are you talking about ? ' ' 

Transitive and intransitive is one of the three de- 
cisive battles of grammar. It is so bound up with 
predicate nominative that it is a good plan to sand- 
wich the two topics. The worst cause of stumbling 
is the definition, often taught in schools, that a tran- 
sitive verb is one which takes an object. Excom- 
municate it. Pronounce a formal anathema against 
the cursed thing. A transitive verb in the active 
voice always has an object, but never allow the mat- 
ter of "an object" to be associated with "transi- 



108 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

tive." I keep the following scheme on the board 
every day and require the class to refer to it as they 
recite : 
Transitive 

active — always an object. 

passive — subject is acted on, no object. 
Intransitive 

subject acts, but there is no object. 

No Voice. 

Grammarians regularly speak of intransitives as 
active, but this is so confusing in elementary work, 
so destructive of the very distinction we are erect- 
ing, that it is best to insist on "has no voice" for 
class work. 

An active verb is considered a normal, decent kind. 
Passives and intransitives are confused. The steps 
to take in every approach are : 

(1) What is the subject? All is hopeless guess- 
work without this beginning. 

(2) Is the subject acting, or being acted on? 

(3) If it is acting, is there an object? 

Don't analyze verb phrases into component parts. 
In "This might easily have been sooner finished" 
might have been finished is the verb. 

Attack the conjugations thus : Apply the three fol- 
lowing tests; if any one fits, the verb is regular; if 
no one fits, it is irregular. (1) The past tense ends 
in a d or t which is not in the present (made, had, 
brought). (2) The principal parts are the same 
throughout [hit). (3) The vowel is merely shortened 
in the past (bleed). The subject is a non-essential, 
not worth going into detail with; but the general 
notion is useful. 

Subjunctive mood really exists in English in a few 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 109 

formal or archaic uses like "if it were", "may it 
be", "though he have." These are real variations 
in form to show that the verbs express mere condi- 
tion of thought. Beyond this there is only a welter 
of subtleties, a flux of contradictory opinion. If left 
to your own devices, have nothing to do with any- 
thing but the few realities. If you are required to 
teach subjunctives, stick to one simple formula : Does 
it clearly indicate a mere condition of thought? 
Many cases are debatable ; there are fewer subjunc- 
tives than you may suppose. Probably the following 
are indicative: "I could have shot it with perfect 
ease" (=the fact is that I had power to), "I may 
be wrong about this" (=the fact is that there is such 
a possibility), "Perhaps you would like to stay" 
(=the fact perhaps really is that). The following 
would usually be called subjunctive, because they 
clearly show, or the context shows, that the verb is 
not indicating a fact : "If only I could have shot it", 
"I might have gone to bed sooner", "Wouldn't he 
have enjoyed that!" Few will ever object to your 
method if you limit subjunctives to: (1) real sub- 
junctive by its form, (2) mere prayerful hope or 
exhortation that does not sound the least like fact, 
(3) a condition that is clearly a case of speaking 
about what would be true if the facts were otherwise. 

Infinitives and participles must come last, because 
they are resemblance-words, with no new character- 
istic of their own ; and work with them is really im- 
possible until their prototypes are understood. They 
are words derived from verbs, having all the powers 
except the great one of making a statement, and 
used like nouns and adjectives. 

Any verbal used like a noun is an infinitive. to 



110 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

do, doing, to have been done (unless you de- 
cide to distinguish gerunds). The essential of all 
drill with infinitives is to explain their constructions 
as nouns. ' ' Complementary ' ' is worse than nothing 
in English grammar. "Used like an adjective" (as 
in "the thing to do") is a sledge-hammer for batter- 
ing the foundations you have so laboriously laid. An 
infinitive is always a kind of noun. These so-called 
adjectival and adverbial uses can always be ex- 
plained as phrases in which the root infinitive is the 
object of to. The working formula for pupils is: 
Does it make fairly good sense to substitute for and 
the ing form? "That is a queer thing to do" be- 
comes ' ' That is a queer thing for doing" ; i ' He went 
to die for his country" becomes "He went for dying, 
for the purpose of dying." This analysis is likely 
to become a favorite — it is so easy. It must not be 
allowed unless it can be defended by getting a "fair- 
ly sensible" result. Don't accept this "object of 
to" analysis when another kind is possible. In "It 
seems queer to have been loafing here all summer" 
to have been loafing is the real or "logical" subject 
of seems. In "He is to die in the morning" to die 
may be called a predicate nominative. 

All grammars discuss "subject of the infinitive," 
and most are partial to it. I refused to teach it for 
many years, following Whitney's analysis; later 
thought it might be the easy explanation for many 
cases, especially with verbs of commanding and the 
like; but have finally decided against it. "Subject 
of the infinitive" is a Latinism. In "He asked me to 
go" we do not feel that me is a subject ; we feel it as 
an object. If we discard "subject of the infinitive," 
we do not have to contort so many English ideas to 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 111 

fit a Latin framework. In "We considered him to be 
honest ,} him is the real object; to be is a kind of ob- 
jective predicate. In "He urged us to go" to go is 
the object; us is indirect. In "He made me eat" eat 
is objective predicate, like ' ' He made me an eater. ' ' 

Probably ten per cent of these analyses of infini- 
tives are not real analyses — i. e., they don't really 
explain anything. Say as much to your class occa- 
sionally. Our language is full of old worn-down 
stubs and metamorphosed fragments of idioms which 
cannot be neatly arranged in a cabinet as Latin 
specimens can. School work in grammar is not con- 
cerned with these except as interesting curios. They 
are specially numerous in infinitive syntax. 

The same kind of statement is true of participles. 
They are always used like adjectives. To say that 
a participle has an object or is modified by an adverb 
clause is nothing to the purpose. What noun or pro- 
noun does it modify? Not "How is it acted on?" 
but "How does it act?" 

So much for single words; now for phrases and 
clauses. 

It is best to reserve "phrase" for a preposition 
and its object.* To call "running at high speed" a 
phrase is misleading, or at least is such a generality- 
haze as makes travel difficult. If you call "the sun 
having risen" a phrase, you won't confuse a gram- 
marian; but you will not light the paths for un- 
acquainted feet. 

In the same way it is more effective to reserve 

"This sounds like a deviation from the definition given by all 
grammarians, but is not really much of a departure from their 
practice. Whitney, for example, discusses nominative absolutes with- 
out once using ' ' phrase, ' ' and employs the word only in ' ' verb 
phrase ' ' and ' ' prepositional phrase. ' ' 



112 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

"clause" for dependent clause. "Main clause" is 
not confusing. Teach them in connection with con- 
junctions. A coordinating conjunction joins two 
nouns or two adjectives or two phrases or two 
clauses, yokes them as a pair, one being as important 
as the other. A subordinating conjunction joins a 
clause to some one word. You may never make real 
progress until you write out that main clause in 
huge letters and then, in a loop extending from the 
modified word, write the clause in small letters. In 
the case of subject clauses used after an expletive it 
("It is not likely that he will come") the conjunction 
does no real conjoining, unless you say that it hitches 
an appositive clause to it. The truth of this is 
doubtful. 

One oddity may be worth mention in this connec- 
tion, just on the chance that it might prevent an 
embarrassing moment in class. "I am told that he 
is ill." That he is ill is a "retained object," like 
"He was given a medal." 

Some are not in favor of diagraming the structure 
of a sentence. One teacher who has critically ob- 
served results in a long experience declares that 
boys learn the trick of making a passable diagram 
without acquiring any true understanding of struc- 
ture. That phenomenon is something I have never 
seen. Allow me to illustrate from algebra. A boy 
might learn to "diagram" the cube-root process, and 
then, by rote, without intelligence, apply his formula 
and his blocks to any number of different problems 
in extracting cube-root. He cannot learn any such 
formula for the solution of miscellaneous problems 
leading to simultaneous equations. Each one is a 
separate exercise in diagraming by the use of x, y, 



TEACHING GRAMMAR 113 

and z the conditions named, under which two or 
three men run races or give away their money. Have 
you ever heard that a boy learned the trick of arriv- 
ing* at his equations — his diagram, that is — without 
a corresponding apprehension of what he was doing ? 
Of course there is such a thing as brainless luck occa- 
sionally, even in stating problems; but only 
occasionally. 

It is difficult not to believe that when a pupil can 
sort out clauses and phrases and put them where 
they belong in a schematic arrangement, he shows a 
useful mental attainment — specially useful for his 
writing. 

The best diagram is the one that most simply dis- 
plays the real structure of a sentence. The plan fol- 
lowed in the illustration below is to put the principal 
verb below its subject, to list all modifiers under the 
words they modify, and to place appositives, predi- 
cate nominatives, and objects at the right of the 
words that govern them. The sentence is : 

"That same night of your desertion I came from 
a friend's house — where I was excessively admired, 
whatever you may think of it — and what should I 
hear but that a lass in a tartan screen desired to 
speak with me. ' ' 

Begin with easy sentences. Don't be in a rush to 
progress to hard ones. 

In all your grammar work emphasize at every 
opportunity that you aim at practical, useful results, 
that mere puzzles are not dwelt on. Perhaps while 
you are dealing with verb phrases some pupil will 
write '"if he had of been." There is your chance. 
Aim at the essentials. In parsing don't waste time 
with classes and genders and inflections. If time is 



114 



WHAT IS ENGLISH? 



short, it is better to know unfalteringly what an in- 
transitive verb is than to have hazy ideas abont in- 
flection of the future perfect, potential mood, parti- 
ciples in n as a mark of the old conjugation — and all 
the myriad of formalisms. Keep perpetually before 
you that vision of better sentences. 



I 

came 




- 




'that same night 


■ 


of your desertion. 




from a friend's house 




i was admired 


("excessively 
J obj. 
\ you may think whatever 


] 
s 


obj. 

hould hear what 


of it 



obj. 

a lass desired to speak 

with me 



in a tartan screen 

A heavy line will show graphically how noun 
clauses are used. 

object 
we fear that you will not like it 

appositive obj. 

the fact that he looks sheepish proves nothing 



CHAPTER VI 

JOHN WILSON'S IDEA 

The teaching of punctuation can be made to serve 
a far higher end than mere accuracy in using points ; 
it can be made to cause a betterment in the quality 
of sentences, an enhancement in maturity and agree- 
ableness of form. The claim sounds extravagant. 
It seems at first view like a paradox to say that in- 
struction in placing commas will refine the writing 
of sentences. As a theory no one could accept it. 
But it is a truth, proved by long experience, arrived 
at unexpectedly, found as a lucky by-product of a 
process that used to be thought too mean for noble 
minds. The fact is that after training in syntax a 
thorough course in punctuation does more to improve 
the quality of a mediocre pupil 's sentences than any 
amount of spiritual exhortation. 

Just why this should be so is hard to say. One 
probable reason is that in our headlong, impatient 
America it is of the greatest benefit to a pupil to 
have to do something exactly right. We hear the 
despairing cry from every school and college that our 
young people are careless, incapable of concentrating 
accurately, unable to enunciate, unable to phrase 
definite answers, unable to compose by a prede- 
termined plan. In 1914 the "Harvard Board of Over- 
seers voted that "the faculty be requested to devise 
suitable measures to remedy this condition of af- 
fairs" — the condition, namely, of the failure of 

115 



116 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

students "to write correct and idiomatic English." 
The Graduate School of Business Administration of 
Harvard reported in the same year that only 21 per 
cent of its students (all of them college graduates) 
received a passing mark when their reports were 
graded as English, and that these were nearly all 
C 's ; but only one year later, as the result of ' ' ex- 
plicit directions for writing," 60 per cent passed. 
That is always the requirement if instruction is 
really to instruct — that it be specific. A dramatic 
coach who says ' ' Act ! Why, you must act the part ! ' ' 
gets no result. A composition teacher who says 
"Write decently" gets no result. We must specify 
what is to be done. Nor is it sufficient to lay down 
a set of rules. They will accomplish nothing at all. 
It is specific work with unpunctuated sentences that 
brings improvement in style. I should guess that 
the brain-process is one of gaining familiarity with 
a great variety of sentence-forms, of getting a prac- 
tical, definite acquaintance with the elements of a 
lot of types which the pupil would not adopt from 
his reading, but which he does learn to imitate after, 
he has been forced into intimacy with them. Pupils 
are Egyptians in bondage required to make brick; 
punctuation furnishes some straw. 

I am no psychologist and vouch for no explana- 
tion, but I do vouch for the fact of experience. Year 
after year I have watched results similar to this: 
Peterkin has no understanding of the difference be- 
tween one sentence and two sentences ; he is given a 
drill-book which takes him step by step, with plenty 
of colloquial comment and illustration, through some 
six hundred unpunctuated sentences culled mostly 
from periodicals and novels; he flounders dread- 



JOHN WILSON'S IDEA 117 

fully, because he ' ' never had any of the darned stuff 
before " ; he goes through it all a second time ; there- 
after he writes fairly respectable sentences. Granted 
that this process puts his soul in a treadmill, it must 
be acknowledged that when he gets through the mill 
his appearance on paper is much more that of an 
educated gentleman. 

It is instruction in the framing and pointing of 
sentences that counts. In proportion as you dwell 
on sentence-structure, enforcing only the simplest 
and most general requirements for paragraphing, 
you will have success. This is not the place to argue 
that statement, but I will cite two witnesses in sup- 
port of it, the two most effective rhetorics in the 
market. The 1912 edition of one increased its un- 
punctuated sentences five times; the preface spoke 
of "the recent change of emphasis from the para- 
graph to the sentence." The other, whose 1910 
edition had an unusually large proportion of un- 
punctuated matter, trebled this large proportion in 
1914. This signifies something, is not an accident. 
You must know what is now going on in this change- 
able world of English, else you may be badly ham- 
pered by starting with antiquated ideas that will 
interfere with your progress. A Yale professor of 
literature was recently asked what the college would 
like most stress put upon in the schools. "The sen- 
tence" was his unqualified answer. 

Of course there are elements of good sentences . 
that punctuation never touches, but it may almost 
be said that these are beyond the reach of anything 
but native talent. Variety of forms is directly stimu- 
lated, and unity is much emphasized. Suppose, how- 
ever, for the sake of argument, that the pointing of 



118 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

other people's sentences gives no training in any 
quality of force or beauty. The greatest considera- 
tion has not been hinted at in that admission. The 
point to be attended to is this : If you should classify 
the illiterate blunders in a million words of college- 
entrance composition, excluding mistakes of spelling 
and syntax, you would find that the great majority 
were of just the sort that the study of punctuation 
tends to eradicate. I read each year more than two 
million words of school themes, have been for eight- 
een years classifying errors and studying remedies, 
have observed what works and what does not, have 
never had any fondness for theories, have not the 
slightest affection for commas — and I affirm without 
any hesitation that punctuation drill is what pro- 
duces decent sentences. The condition is similar to 
what we discovered about spelling: that the million 
errors are not a million at all, but a few hundred 
common forms incessantly reappearing. So of sen- 
tence-structure : it is not a case of a million clumsi- 
nesses, but of a few dozen common punctuation 
blunders that incessantly recur. And just as inten- 
sive spelling will remove the great bulk of offensive 
ignorance, so the greater part of sentence-crudeness 
will disappear after thorough work in pointing. 

How does the ordinary rhetoric address itself to 
this labor 1 By trying to persuade you and the pupils 
that nobody cares much about those arbitrary sym- 
bols. If it is a text that makes an honest effort, it is 
probably sprinkled with untruths. "Two words in 
apposition should not be separated by a comma" is 
the first rule in a 200-page manual that I had to use 
for many years. ' ' Most of the slight pauses requir- 
ing a mark will be properly served by the comma" 



JOHN WILSON'S IDEA 119 

is from a book containing much good analysis and 
sound advice. Another widely-used text requires the 
pupil to state ' ' What kind of pause the author indi- 
cates by a comma. ' ' The ordinary text is a morgue 
for the corpses of what were once live truths. A 
capital book issued in 1912 announces that one use 
of the semicolon is to introduce. Another, bearing 
on its cover three mighty names, requires a comma 
to separate a long subject from its verb. "A colon," 
declares another Composition, "is used to separate 
the different members of a compound sentence, when 
they themselves are divided by semicolons" — an 
affirmation that contains only as much truth as 
"Horse-cars are used to convey the population of 
New York City." Such dead things do no damage; 
they are harmless. But it is harmful to teacher and 
pupil to present them as of equal importance with a 
rule for a comma before the conjunction but. For 
their effect is then to make a school suppose that all 
punctuation is as lifeless as themselves. 

In another way the ordinary "section" does dam- 
age — by so misstating the simplest truths that pupils 
and teacher are led to regard the whole subject as 
nebulous and mystical. For example, "To the mind 
of the writer, this explanation has much to commend 
it" is said to deserve a comma because the phrase is 
out of its natural order ; yet such a rule would call 
for a coimna in "Over the door we hung a horse- 
shoe, ' ' where no rational punctuator now advises a 
point. "Commas are used in a complex sentence to 
separate the dependent clause from the rest of the 
sentence." Yes; also commas are not used for such 
a purpose ; also if a man is lost in a city he will find 
his way if he goes straight ahead— or turns. Here 



120 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

is the most elusive subject in the whole code (the 
distinction between a restrictive and a non-restric- 
tive clanse) cheerfully committed to one vacuous rule 
and illustrated by two sentences containing restric- 
tive clauses ! Then the author adds, with an artless- 
ness that all power of sarcasm is feeble against, "If 
the connection is close, the comma is usually omit- 
ted." Of the same astounding quality is the rule, 
"Commas are used to separate the members of a 
compound sentence when they are short or closely 
connected," one illustration having the adversative 
yet and the other having five very brief and simi- 
lar imperatives without any conjunctions. Why 
should we be told when space is precious that "the 
dash is sometimes used with the colon"? It is equally 
true by modern canons that it is poor taste to use it 
so. Suppose that a pupil, having been taught that 
"adjective phrases are set off by commas," writes 
* ' I bought a couple, of newspapers ' ' ; shall we chide 
him for knowing too much about grammar? It is 
impossible to speak temperately of such futility 
masquerading as instruction. 

We have passed from untruths through chaos. 
The third division of this indictment of the ordinary 
"section" is its extreme brevity and resultlessness. 
Even if it presented only the truth, presented all the 
truth, what effect does such a summary conspectus 
ever have? Does it really perform work in the 
minds of nesh-and-blood children? Does it achieve 
the difficult task of planting habits, or accomplish 
the miracle of extirpating wrong habits ? If so, the 
average teacher should be enlightened as to how he 
may avoid his seventy-times-seven explaining of the 
old familiar rule, his careful preparation for in- 



JOHN WILSON'S IDEA 121 

troclucing a new one. If many intelligent pupils have 
to be hounded for years before they will habitually 
place a comma before an adversative conjunction, 
what infinitesimal tittle of influence is imparted by 
the following: "When a series of distinct statements 
all have a common dependence on what precedes or 
follows them, they may be separated from each other 
by semicolons " ? A formal law, stating in three lines 
the whole mystery of non-restrictive clauses, offering 
no comment, supporting itself by the meagerest illus- 
trations, seems directed at some eidolon of a student, 
some pedagogic abstraction ; for mere human minds, 
albeit with a literary bent, are likely to falter after 
months of drill. Real results in actual young brains 
are obtained only by protracted and earnest drill — 
the kind of effort used by the supervisor of English 
who wrote in the English Journal for September, 
1914, about "sentence sense." Experience had 
taught her that true instruction is warfare, that the 
"section" is merely a colored poster advertising for 
volunteers. She said: "I wonder if other schools 
have to fight [what does the * section' know about 
fighting?] as vigorously [how much vigor is there in 
the 'section'!] as we do to eradicate [what grub- 
bing for noxious roots does the 'section' do?] such 
mistake as this: 'My little sister is very pretty she 
has light hair and blue eyes.'" Our "section" 
either has nothing to say about such an unscholarly 
negative or disposes of it with matadorish grace 
thus: "The comma should not be used instead of a 
semicolon in sentences thus combined. ' ' What need 
for a "section" to declare bloody war and "wage 
it unremittingly for several years ' ' ? No need what- 
ever. The "section" has merely to wave its wand 



122 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

and say, "Be thou eradicated." It deals only with 
magic, using cryptic utterances like "Sentences 
should not be written for the purpose of illustrating 
punctuation" or "You can see from this conversa- 
tion of Tom and Maggie, how punctuation marks 
may suggest to the reader a number of things." 
(That comma after Maggie suggests one thing to at 
least one reader.) In the name of all that is easy 
and idyllic why should teachers countermine in the 
trenches and charge with bayonets if the pleasing 
incantations of ' ' sections ' ' really effect any results f 

Whence came all these untruths and easy incanta- 
tions f From previous textbooks. Where did those 
authors get their knowledge and their mistakes? 
From still earlier books. If we follow up this cas- 
cade, what source do we reach 1 First we shall come 
upon Bigelow's manual, a storage reservoir that 
irrigated all the punctuational fields of the country 
in the 80 's and 90 's. Bigelow was editorial proof- 
reader for the Riverside Press, a sort of Archbishop 
of Commas for his generation, whose influence went 
everywhere and went deep. Thousands of profes- 
sors and editors hold today opinions that were first 
fed by the waters of his dicta. But he was not a 
source. He gave out no more than he received. The 
stream runs back to John Wilson's Treatise of 1871. 
Not that Wilson originated our usage. No man was 
powerful enough to do that. He often protests 
against the custom of his day, but he records it and 
has to yield to it. His Treatise was not a source of 
usage, but the one great source of ready-to-hand and 
easy-to-copy exposition of usage. 

Wilson was an analytical Scotchman, who died in 
1868. As a printer he had ideals ; as a theologian he 



JOHN WILSON'S IDEA 123 

was a keen progressive ; he loved and helped to edit 
Burns; he received an honorary degree from Har- 
vard; and all the days of his long life he studied 
punctuation. He reverenced his subject because of 
the assistance it could afford in developing a clear, 
sound style. Unlike the makers of our modern 
''sections," he could honestly testify that in the 
preparation of his nineteen editions in forty years 
"little aid could be derived from other writers." 
His second American edition in 1855 he thought 
"the most complete of any on the subject that he 
has seen." Not content with having made the best, 
he continually amplified, revising and extending his 
comments, enforcing his precepts with many pages 
of illustrative sentences, and offering instruction by 
a great many more pages of unpunctuated sentences. 
The twentieth edition of the Treatise, brought out 
three years after his death, is the great storehouse 
which every succeeding text-maker has pillaged 
without acknowledgment — often, no doubt, plunder- 
ing at second or third hand, and so not even being 
aware whence his booty had originally come. The 
little manual that puts "not" in its rule for apposi- 
tives is sheer burglary from Wilson's treasures. 
That absurd perversion is taken verbatim, but the 
editor had not the wit to retain a qualifying clause 
("if they may be regarded as a single phrase") 
which shows that Wilson conceived his rule as a 
statement of the exceptional case. Wilson is also 
responsible (heaven only knows why he phrased his 
rule as he did) for that commandment to "set off 
adjective phrases by commas." It was Wilson who 
dragged others to hideous ruin down by declaring 
that "two clauses, one depending on the other, are 



124 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

separated by a comma." He could hardly have said 
anything else if he paid deference to the facts of his 
period. But in his comments he urges the avoidance 
of a comma with a restrictive clause. His supple- 
mentary exposition is always clear and thorough. 
He maintains (what custom later overruled, but has 
now returned to) that the second comma should be 
used in John, James, and Harry. He perceived that a 
comma ought not to be placed between a subject and 
its verb; and he is sustained by the best modern 
usage. He announces (though he cannot disregard 
the universal opinion of his day) that punctuation 
has for its primary function the separating of gram- 
matical elements. Verbose and tiresome he may be, 
but his system is complete and unimpeachable. He 
justified his pronouncement that "the essential prin- 
ciples of punctuation are as fixed and determinate 
as the canons of syntax." 

He has not convinced the world of the truth of 
this. Practically every rhetorician in this country 
has taken his arrangement of rules directly or in- 
directly from Wilson, yet denies Wilson's funda- 
mental notion. It is curious to see how a whole gen- 
eration was willing to pillage the storehouse for 
facts, but scrupulously refrained from even looking 
at the central fact. The little things were easy to 
carry away ; the main thing was too heavy to bother 
with. 

Those who "borrowed" or "used freely" were 
singularly forbearing in another way: they never 
touched what Wilson would have called the most 
valuable idea in his repository — namely, the itali- 
cized sentence at the end of this paragraph. Prob- 
ably the borrowers could not understand it. Possibly 



JOHN WILSON'S IDEA 125 

it seemed wrong-end-to, and so they judged it was a 
misprint, a damaged piece of goods — and left it be- 
hind. Perhaps they were repelled by the four un- 
necessary commas. More likely they were charitable, 
feeling in their gratitude that they ought not to let 
the world know how rabid poor old Wilson grew in 
his later years. Since I have no reason for such 
compunctions, I will reveal what he said : "Punctua- 
tion has not received that attention which its impor- 
tance demands. Let punctuation form a branch of 
academical instruction; let it be studied after a 
competent knowledge of English etymology and 
syntax has been acquired; let the rules be thor- 
oughly comprehended by the pupil. It is worthy of 
remark, that, by habituating themselves to the prac- 
tice of pointing, their attention will naturally be 
directed to clearness of thought, and accuracy of 
expression." 

This is not the ill-considered ranting of a hobbyist 
nor the excitement of enthusiasm. It is the deliber- 
ate, well-founded judgment of a canny Scot, of a 
rational, careful, highly respected, conservative citi- 
zen, whose intellect was stable and vigorous, whose 
whole big Treatise does not exhibit one piece of false 
analysis. Heed his advice so far as circumstances 
at Smithboro permit. If you are not allowed to select 
a rhetoric that has many exercises, perhaps you can 
arrange to have printed and sold to pupils at cost 
some strips of unpunctuated sentences. This is done 
with good results at some preparatory schools. An- 
other device, easier but not so effective, is to dictate 
every day a good illustrative sentence from news- 
papers or novels or your own brain. If punctuation 
is not in favor at Smithboro, don't begin a campaign 



126 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

for it. Keep quiet, do what you can, and bide your 
time. Perhaps after a year or two you can have 
your way, and you may even be instrumental in per- 
suading grade teachers to establish a few rudiments. 
A simple "Comma Book" has been used with telling 
effect on eighth-grade pupils. That is where the 
fight ought to begin. Those grade-years of writing 
without reference to points are what make high- 
school labor so herculean. 

In teaching punctuation you will never get any- 
where with abstractions. "Parenthetical" and "re- 
strictive" and "disjunctive" convey nothing to the 
average pupil — nor to the rest of us, for that mat- 
ter. What do you really learn about "category" 
from this definition? "It is not an instrument which 
the mind uses, but is an element in a whole which in 
its unity the mind is." You can get nothing out of 
that unless you previously knew what it means. But 
you can learn something from this: "A category is 
a way the mind sees things ; it sees one thing happen 
after another thing ; it knows that a series of things 
has kept happening one after another for a long 
time ; it has to believe that the same series of hap- 
penings is going to continue tomorrow, and the day 
after, and so on ; and it can 't think of life except as 
such a series; and this fact-that-we-can't-get-away- 
from, this fact of happening-one-after-another, we 
call Time. That is one category. There is another 
one of Space." It is long-winded and very unphil- 
osophical ; but it does work in a plain human brain. 
Try always to be concrete, to talk of things, of 
known facts, when you have to explain "paren- 
thetical. ' ' 

Try punctuation. Give it a full trial. The 



JOHN WILSON'S IDEA 127 

only objectors to it, so far as I know, are those 
who have never really tested it. The sentence-cam- 
paign is a real fight, a long one. Any teacher who 
has developed the punctuation strategy, who has 
fought vigorously and waged war for years, knows 
that nothing else he can do produces a tithe of such 
fundamental benefit. Plentiful exercises with plain 
human prose, not with the mystifications of oratory 
and poesy, is a mighty engine against the grisly 
legions of carelessness. You may mobilize your 
forces of "orderly thinking" and inspire them with 
devoted valor, but they are crude militia until Drill- 
master Punctuation has trained them in tactics. His 
task is long. He is harsh and unromantic. He must 
begin with grammar and dwell upon it pitilessly. 
Most recruits and taxpayers consider him brutal and 
inglorious. But he knows what war really is. He 
wins victories. 



CHAPTER VII 

WHAT IS A COMMA? 

Punctuation is considered the least interesting 
subject in the world, is never a topic at teachers' 
conventions, will cause every friend to look bored 
and uneasy if suggested in conversation. This in- 
difference is due to three causes: (1) the feeling 
that punctuation is unesthetic, (2) ignorance of the 
fact that it is of prime importance, (3) ignorance of 
what it is. Chapter I should have disposed of the 
first cause and Chapter VI of the second. The pur- 
pose of this chapter is to dispose of the third. The 
title is chosen because an adequate exposition of 
what a comma is reveals the whole sum of the knowl- 
edge we are seeking, is in fact about four-fifths of 
the total. 

A clear understanding is marvelously hard to get. 
Many persons cherish the most violent prejudices, 
so that one principal of schools will wish to dis- 
charge a teacher who uses no commas at the ends 
of lines in addressing an envelope, and a secretary 
of a state board of education will not allow any 
commas at all in his printed reports; one man is 
nauseated by a comma with a dash, and another is 
grieved at the boorishness of omitting it. Such ex- 
treme feelings are exceptional. The more common 
attitude is that nobody really knows and that every 
person has to guess when it is time to stick in a mark. 
The following professions of agnosticism were all 

128 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 129 

made by men of exceptionally good intellect, all 
somewhat prominent as editors or educators: 
" Everyone has to pick up a system for himself"; 
"I go absolutely by the way it feels"; "I can't 
argue the questions, but simply know that in my 
long proofreading career I have always done thus 
and so, and am sure I am right"; "no comprehen- 
sive code can possibly account for all the subtleties 
and emphases of the uses of commas"; "no definite 
rules can be given"; "punctuation comes by na- 
ture"; "I strive instinctively to be clear." Is there 
in the whole range of human puzzles anything more 
baffling than this unanimous assertion that nobody 
can know what a comma is? I should not have the 
hardihood to write this chapter if it were not for 
three very good reasons : First, that all these agnos- 
tics really do use commas in about the same ways; 
second, that I am offering here nothing of my own, 
but am merely referring you to a source of indubitable 
authority; third, you will be saved any amount of 
perplexity and blundering if you know of a surety 
exactly what a comma is. When you have finished 
the chapter, look up the Century's definition; you 
can then be satisfied that you have acquired no ex- 
ceptional or unreliable notions. 

One caution may be necessary: don't try to prose- 
lyte other teachers, don't argue with older heads, 
don't strive to revolutionize methods or change text- 
books, or show them what's what in Smithboro. 
Teach in the way you are asked to teach. If the 
principal or the head of the department thinks that 
"rigid rules" are destructive of the spirit, don't 
oppose him. You might as well hope to persuade an 
old man that his religion is vain. What follows is 



130 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

to inform you. Any teacher whose information is 
thorough will in due time, if he is tactful and hard- 
working, find that his ideas are effective without any 
propaganda. Be skeptical about what follows. You 
have only one writer's word for it, and you cannot 
be sure of its truth until you have tested and 
checked up for a year. If only this chapter prevents 
your present conceptions from solidifying without 
challenge and analysis, it will do much. 

What is a comma? The most recent and most 
ambitious answer has been given in Educational 
Review for October, 1915. The writer presents a 
really able analysis, founded on observation, dis- 
playing with acumen the essence of what authors 
attempt with points. She makes short work of the 
comma-shows-a-pause idea. Next she sweeps away 
the criterion of syntax, because this is a dictum, not 
answerable to reason. "By virtue of what inherent 
quality," she asks, "does the vocative demand the 
comma I If the amateur ranges in literature he will 
learn that this construction often actually does ex- 
press itself without a point." She says that rhetor- 
ics are scholastic because they offer usa" synthesis 
of practice," as shown by their customary expres- 
sion, ' ' the comma is used. ' ' This will not do for her ; 
she must seek out a "working principle; not a code, 
but a real psychology, based on intrinsic character." 
Ponder that concept — the* "intrinsic character" of 
a comma. That means that a dot prolonged curv- 
ingly downward to a point has an inherent psycho- 
logical quality, a power implicit in that particular 
shape, belonging to it in its very existence. This is 
no distortion of her plain meaning, for she amplifies 
the thought on many pages with such expres- 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 131 

sions as these: "Each sign must perform its func- 
tion by virtue of some immediate suggestive power, 
or not at all", "marks peculiarly suggestive in 
form", "the indeterminate curves of the interroga- 
tion", "the quick expressiveness of the other signs", 
"the comma, with its tiny hook leftward, creates a 
suspension", "the colon is essentially dramatic in 
effect, abrupt, definitive, revealing no suggestion of 
subordination. ' ' 

A mere man knows not how to treat that. As a 
fancy it is admirable. Moreover the writer applies 
her imaginings to the facts with rare discrimina- 
tion, interpreting the designs of authors with sympa- 
thetic skill. Hers is a competent mind and a seeing 
eye. That is why her notion is worth exhibiting. 
If she fables, what may not be expected from less 
gifted reasoners ? If she is right, the whole world is 
wrong; for the universal assumption has been that 
our points are arbitrary symbols, that their use is 
an artificial code, valid only because it is generally 
understood by a large body of readers. But this 
code she will not accept, because it "lies apart from 
natural creative expression." Hence no one can 
really know what a comma is unless he has that liter- 
ary sensibility which reveals the connotation insepar- 
able from a dot with a long tail. 

We cannot believe that any symbol conveys a 
message except to persons who are accustomed to 
it. A dash, a dot, and a dash suggest to our author 
suspension, decision, suspension; to some early 
printers they would have meant nothing, comma, 
nothing; to a telegraph operator they are the letter 
K. Commas "cannot set off a word" to her eye, 
but they actually do that for my eye. To her a dot 



132 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

symbolizes completeness ; to one who is familiar with 
repeating decimals it represents interminability. To 
her a semicolon is "a period made suspensive"; to a 
Greek scholar it is a question mark. To her mind the 
colon is dramatic; by "most" of Dr. Johnson's day 
it was confounded with a semicolon. 

^ Such a child of fancy must be thrilled by the life 
history of that poor colon. There he was "inher- 
ently dramatic and definitive," of power to "charge 
with final force" — and yet for 700 years before 
Gutenberg was born he had served as the smallest 
divider; in the Mainz Psalter of 1459 he was the 
slight mark between the ponderous commas that 
terminated sentences; and for a century after the 
founder of the Aldine Press was dead he could still 
be found in this menial office. Even Johnson's per- 
spicacity could recognize his nature only with a "per- 
haps," and had to acknowledge that he was "not 
very necessary, being used to mark a pause greater 
than that of a comma and less than that of a period." 
To this day he does lowly duty in schedules and 
prayer-books and arithmetics. Not until 1915 was 
he known to have any intrinsic quality, and then his 
nature was visible to only one bright woman. 

To all the world besides he is inherently a mean- 
ingless pair of dots. Only recently has he been 
invested with an artificial significance, so that now 
we see him wearing the livery of a footman who is 
to usher us from the hall of a sentence into the draw- 
ing room ; appropriate only in constructions that are 
formal and dignified. This function has been 
assigned so recently that the Century defines a colon 
as marking "a discontinuity greater than that indi- 
cated by the semicolon." Most readers of this 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 133 

article have lived long enough to watch the process 
of agreeing upon one particular office. 

The whimsy of "inherent quality" will hardly be 
dangerous in this form, for few will take it seri- 
ously. But in another guise it misleads intellectual 
men, who will tell you that they use the comma at 
a given point in an undefinable way, feeling that it is 
needed, feeling that it charges with emphasis the 
expression that follows. They feel that their emo- 
tion will be transmitted ; are offended by the soulless 
suggestion that no comma conveys anything until the 
world has agreed on a meaning. This curious fail- 
ure to realize that the force of points cannot be cre- 
ated by the individual is shown in the ease with 
which we have credited the establishing of our 
punctuation to one man, the founder of the Aldine 
Press. If ever a man was fitted for that superhuman 
task, he was. In scholarship he was prodigious, in 
zeal he was lofty, in energy stupendous ; he founded 
an academy ; he made of his assistants an even more 
powerful institution; his press was an educational 
fountain. From my youth up I have never doubted 
that he "primarily developed" or was "a pioneer" 
or that he "introduced." If the Century says so, 
who dares doubt? Yet such a feat he never 
attempted. Manutius no more introduced our 
punctuation than Chaucer invented poetry. He was 
not nearly so' original as Chaucer. Indeed origi- 
nality was farthest from his aim. As he wanted his 
readers to understand easily, it was necessary to use 
points in conventional ways that had been familiar 
for — I don't know how long. No one has thought 
it worth while to write the tangled history. We may 
see modern-looking commas in Greek script of the 



134 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

sixth century and top-and-bottom periods in fifth- 
century Greek. Doubtless the mystic strands of pre- 
cedent stretch back unbroken through Alexandria 
to the founding of Thebes. The encyclopedia takes 
us as far as the third century B.C., when Aristo- 
phanes, a critical editor of Byzantium, "invented" a 
system. We might suppose from the introductions 
to treatises that during all those centuries no direc- 
tor of a scriptorium ever committed his code to writ- 
ing, and that the art of punctuation was again 
" invented" by Manutius, and that his grandson was 
the first to record a printer's system in his 
Orthographiae Ratio in 1561. We should have to 
guess that the art swam into view like a comet at 
the Bosporus, disappeared, and was never seen 
again till it shone over Venice seventeen centuries 
later. I have no time or knowledge to examine this 
astounding assumption. It is sufficient for our pur- 
pose to note that if we open a volume of medieval fac- 
similes, we may see a French MS. of the seventh cen- 
tury in which semicolons separate the sentences; 
most of the MSS. of later date show sentences begin- 
ning with capitals, ending with periods, and pointed 
freely with colons. The early printers adopted pre- 
cisely what the scribes had made familiar. Before 
Manutius ever saw a printing-press, perhaps before 
he had seen a printed book, three Germans produced 
at Paris a volume whose punctuation looks remark- 
ably modern, with its parentheses, its hyphens, and 
its commas — to mention only the refinements. In 
contrast to this a page of an Aldine preface of 1513 
is a maze, so thickly is it strewn with commas, so 
bewildering is the use of the period as both an end 
stop and an internal point, so curious is the total 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 135 

absence of the colon and the employment of a semi- 
colon as an abbreviation for ue. Manutius's page is 
farther- from the customs of our clay than the page 
of Gering, Kranz, and Freiburger of 1471. Later 
printers were quite unconscious of what had been 
"established" at Venice. I have a beautiful piece 
of Dutch typography printed 127 years after Manu- 
tius was dead, in which the old-fashioned colons and 
slanting lines declare that their masters are inde- 
pendent of the Aldine Press. They followed a sys- 
tem that was more common in their part of the world. 
Every normal printer had to pass judgment on how 
to make his books most easy to read. The marks 
were few in number, but had been so long employed 
with such diversity and contrariety by the scribes 
that printers had to select from a bewildering mass 
of precedent. Practice was a Chaos where Opinion 
sat umpire and Prejudice was referee and Best 
Usage was an unknown god, ignorantly worshiped 
perhaps, but worshiped. Printers never so lost 
their reason as to conceive that they could originate 
anything. Their one hope was to guess at the prac- 
tice that was most generally acceptable. After 250 
years they succeeded in the extraordinary task of 
agreeing on one fairly uniform code, in which a 
comma marked the smallest degree of separation. 

A common theory until after 1800 (it was never a 
fact) was that a comma indicated a pause for oral 
reading. The new B ritannica says as much, and a 
most reverend American trio would instruct our 
youth in "indicating to the eye the pauses and the 
modulations of the voice. ' ' This definition is usually 
denied nowadays, but persists as vigorously as the 
fear of unlucky Fridays. Very recently I was told 



136 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

by a man who directs the typographical policy of 
a university journal that "a dash is used to prolong 
the pause indicated by a comma. " Nothing will ever 
jar his calm certainty that this is truth. And it is 
true that an oral reader will usually (by no means 
always) halt for a comma and that the average pause 
at a semicolon may be less than at a period. But 
only a human metronome could possibly time himself 
by the points. Any novel opened at any page would 
prove in any psychological laboratory to any rational 
observer that a spirited reader can render the 
author's meaning properly only by pausing longer 
at some commas than at some periods, and by not 
pausing at all at other commas. The old notion is 
beneath argument. Take up any book printed when 
that notion was most common — say early in the last 
century — and observe how many points are method- 
ically placed where no reader ever thinks of pausing. 
Remembering that most literature is pointed by 
printers, inquire how many printers have ever meas- 
ured time-spaces. Not only is all observation of fact 
against this delusion; " authority' ' is orerwhelm- 
ingly against it. As early as 1842 Francillon, a Lon- 
doner who reverenced authority, was not afraid to 
say that "such rules [of pausing] are of little or no 
value." Wilson, the father of American rule-books, 
announced its falsity; and time would fail me to 
quote the verdicts of Marsh and Bigelow and De- 
Vinne and the Fowlers and Orcutt and Teall and 
Klein and Manly. 

The pause myth would not be worth attention if 
it were not for an insidious faith which is corollary 
to it — namely, that we may tell where to insert 
commas in our writing by noticing whether there 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 137 

would be a pause in oral reading. Four times out 
of five the test applies; the fifth betrays sprawling 
ignorance. The test is a will-o-the-wisp that leads 
to such boggy forms as "Springfield Illinois, is his 
town," or "Hurry up Henry, you'll be late," or 
"That, was not to be thought of." It is exactly 
comparable to the belief that you may tell where 
to dig a well by noticing where a forked twig bends 
down. Since the water-witch seldom fails in a favor- 
able locality, many trust it so implicitly that no 
geologist can persuade them of their folly. Neither 
can any lazy writer who believes in pause-witchery 
be convinced by a presentation of the dull facts of 
syntactical stratification. Any open mind, if it is 
willing to observe a little and reason the least bit, 
can perceive what the truth is. 

"We are getting on. A comma is a little signal 
showing disjunction that is not oral. Of what kind, 
then? Many have answered: "The purpose is to 
indicate to the eye the construction of the sentence.' ' 
I have quoted approvingly a pronouncement that 
"the primary function is displaying grammatical 
structure. ' ' This may be true or false. If ' ' construc- 
tion" means kind of syntactical element, the defini- 
tion is absurdly untrue. No author or printer ever 
undertook to show that "this group is a preposi- 
tional phrase" or "here is an adverb clause." Yet 
dozens of controversial paragraphs have been writ- 
ten to assert or deny that points exhibit structure. 
To assert what never was true of any printed page 
is folly ; to deny the existence of what never existed 
is folly. And since these writers are sensible beings, 
they must be misunderstanding one another. There 
is only one possible way of stating the case truly: 



138 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Commas separate syntactical elements and their 
uses can be taught only to those who have a knowl- 
edge of syntax; they do not separate for the pur- 
pose of displaying grammatical relations. This is 
so obvious that I know not why men argue the ques- 
tion. Any long complex sentence so close-knit as to 
need no punctuation will settle it. 

Why, then, does a comma disjoin things? Because 
they are not closely connected in thought. 

Doubtless that formula is inadequate or illogical, 
so that it can be picked to pieces. But this is not 
a dialectic excursion ; we wish to get somewhere. I 
mean that subjects and complements are closely 
related in thought to their verbs, and that restrictive 
modifiers are conceived as cohering to what they 
modify. If sentences had no other elements, it is 
unlikely that commas would ever have been invented. 
They are used to forewarn a reader of expressions 
that are interjected, absolute, parenthetical, loosely 
added, or set down as unconnected items in a 
series — in short (it might almost be said) such 
words or groups as have no structure. In this sense 
the statement that "punctuation indicates construc- 
tion' * is strictly true, though some quibblers might 
prefer to say " indicates lack of construction.' ' 
Whatever the term we employ, however judgment 
has fluctuated from age to age, the central fact has 
always been, apparent in every systematic effort, 
that printers have tried to warn readers of words 
that were juxtaposed but not interwoven. The desire 
for clearness has been so strong that until fifty 
years ago object clauses were regularly pointed, and 
to this day many rhetorics advise the separating of 
a subject clause from its immediately following verb. 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 139 

Careful writers of only a generation ago sometimes 
used twice as many commas as would be tolerated 
by a fastidious editor of today. Yet the principle 
has never altered. It has forever been a question of 
"Is this element to be considered as loosely con- 
joined 1 ' ' 

When an author inserts a comma, takes it out, 
debates, puts it back again, he is engaged with some 
nice distinction. It appears to be a matter of 
commas. Hence he denies that punctuation is an 
exact system, and pities any mind that entertains 
such an absurdity. The fact is that he is not decid- 
ing about a comma ; he is determining his meaning, 
balancing two desirabilities: (1) linking his thought 
closely, (2) disjoining his thought somewhat. It is 
a question of artistic effect, often a very delicate 
one. But when he has made choice of which mean- 
ing to express, the debate about a comma has disap- 
peared. The mark goes or stays by mechanical 
necessity. These entirely different processes, one 
artistic and one mechanical, have been confounded by 
rhetoricians, and hence the vehemence of their feel- 
ing that "all these subtleties and emphases cannot 
be codified." To be sure, the subtleties of meaning 
cannot be classified. No fiat can render perhaps 
always parenthetical or compel us to put a comma 
before the and that joins the members of a compound 
sentence. The law always reads in terms of if it is 
parenthetical, if you desire to show that the two 
members are not strictly coordinate, if a reader 
might for the moment suppose that the and was join- 
ing two words. The law seldom says, "Thou shalt 
use such a point with such a word"; but rather, 
"When thou hast defined thy meaning to thyself, 



140 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

there is only one way to convey it. " A verbal artist 
will protest that he feels a dozen different shades 
of meaning; he would like a graded series of commas. 
But there are no such things. All we have is the one 
crude symbol to indicate disjunction. Once the sub- 
tlety of his thought is analyzed, there is no subtlety 
about putting in a comma to set off what is loosely 
connected. 

"By virtue of what inherent quality?" I know 
not. A vocative or a nominative absolute appears to 
me disruptive by nature. That may be a mere mat- 
ter of association, like taking it for granted that bare 
feet are inherently informal. I find it impossible to 
get interested in such metaphysics. No one can tell 
about the inherent quality of an artificial matter. 
We are dealing only with certain facts of civiliza- 
tion. The scribes did as a matter of fact inherit 
preconceptions that were older than Aristotle, teach- 
ings about absolute elements and minor portions of 
a period, which had long been shown by devices 
called puncta. The world has never departed far 
from their scheme. Nor have we any interest here 
in ideas about reforming usage, or in noticing how 
original minds amend or discard usages. We are 
looking at common custom. There is no denying that 
able writers have- used commas to show pauses or 
emphases, and that groaning publishers have fol- 
lowed their copy. Very respectable brains have 
supposed that commas can be manipulated by indi- 
vidual taste and have pleaded for the signals that 
mean so much to those who hoist them. But what 
about us who read? Possibly we are like wireless 
operators who can receive a mixture of Morse and 
Continental; perhaps we can guess at a conglomer- 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 141 

ate of three or four codes. But unless it is to some 
extent a prearrangement the most soulfully placed 
point conveys nothing to us. For example, a critical, 
level-headed editor recently spoke of "using a 
comma to emphasize what follows"; yet the rhet- 
orics all speak of separation. And that "inherent 
quality" article directly contradicts the editor, 
declaring that "the mark from its form simply 
fails to affect the expression by which it is fol- 
lowed"; it states the complementary conviction that 
"the emphasis of the comma is wholly given to the 
matter by which the point is preceded." The clash 
of fancies is more mirth-provoking than usually 
comes to an essayist's hand, and a witty writer could 
entertain his readers with it. Our purpose, how- 
ever, is not to get fun, but information. If two such 
highly intelligent witnesses negative each other, they 
create an unescapable conviction that a comma no 
more shows direction than a white light can mean 
starboard to one skipper and port to another ; that a 
comma will not obediently mean what we imagine 
it means; that we must humbly learn what it does 
actually signify in rhetorical navigation. Or is a 
sympathetic reader supposed to exercise some clair- 
voyant power that we ordinary fellows lack? It 
would be useful in reading illiterate themes, which 
are always pointed inspirationally. Young writers 
adore those rhetorical uses. They "kind of think" 
that some stop is demanded at this place, and in goes 
a comma. Sign-painters often "feel" that this is 
a good spot for emphasis, and in goes a comma. 
The results are offensive to all who do not them- 
selves employ commas in those ways, but the pupil 
and the painter are invariably unreceptive of our 



142 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

criticism, proud that they are not hampered by rules. 
These are extreme cases, but not caricature. They 
remind us of the unpleasant likelihood that a comma 
is absurd unless used in just the ways prescribed by 
a considerable portion of humanity. 

My whole skepticism about rhetorical use is like 
the feeling Alice had in the Looking-Glass world 
when Humpty Dumpty declared that "stithy" was 
a portmanteau word, packed with a double meaning 
— lithe and slimy. Alice, we are told, thoughtfully 
asked another question. I am thoughtful and strive 
to be polite when a man tells me what a comma 
means to him. I shall now make a second inquiry, 
more difficult and more important than what a 
comma is: Where is the code for using it? 

If a man from Mars, noticing that our clothes are 
similar in essentials but different in details, should 
wish to conform to the best mode, he would be per- 
plexed. Even if he disregarded the extremes of the 
actor's loudness and the collegian's slackness and 
the clergyman's severity, he would still see unreeon- 
cilable differences in the garb of men of his own age 
and status. Now they wear high vests at dinner and 
again they show a broad expense of stiff or of pleated 
bosom. In the same group of careful dressers some 
leave the bottom of the vest unbuttoned, some wear 
belts. Why do they differ? He makes bold to ask a 
man whose vest is entirely buttoned, "How do you 
decide this question of fashion?" The reply is, "Oh, 
there's no rule; it's a matter of individual taste." 
He asks a man with a pin in his tie, "Why do some 
men not wear pins ? ' ' And the reply is, ' ' Oh, there 's 
no rule about it." But the Martian is a keen fellow. 
He can demonstrate in a minute that there are rules, 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 143 

very binding ones. No one leaves the top of his vest 
unbuttoned; no one wears a flower in his tie. Al- 
though these matters are slight, the rules against 
them are as well known as the law against embezzle- 
ment — and better observed. Yet every man he ques- 
tions would scoff at the idea that there is any 
"authority" for doing or not doing. Every one 
asserts that he dresses as he likes. Not one has ever 
looked into a code of fashions; every one feels 
superior to a tailor's pictures or to a column in 
Vogue. All the Martian can do is to notice custom 
and follow as best he may. 

This is the situation when a pupil is required to 
write correct sentences. He is a Martian, plunged 
into an intricacy of conventions. And every text- 
book declares, "Oh, there are no hard-and-fast 
rules.' ' Yet if he has the least discernment he per- 
ceives all kinds of inviolable regulations. He is 
puzzled. We offer him meager instruction. 

The allegory is by no means a parallel. Clothing 
is a joking matter ; punctuation is serious for a pupil. 
Fashions are forced upon us from infancy; punctua- 
tion is not, except in the case of those who are by 
temperament so observant that they acquire uncon- 
sciously the prevailing customs of spelling and 
pointing. This difference has never received proper 
attention from pedagogues. Many an editor and 
professor who never consciously acquired a single 
rule can use commas with unimpeachable skill. He 
has absorbed an accurate knowledge of the art with- 
out formal instruction, and therefore protests 
against teaching strict rules. But the majority of 
pupils, whose senses are alert for matters of cos- 
tume, never distinguish between a comma and a 



144 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

period. They are from Mars and they must be 
shown. A more vital difference between the parable 
and the fact is that fashions in clothes vary from 
spring to autumn, while custom in punctuation is a 
matter of generations. 

Youth hardly sees the garb of a generation ago; 
the commas of a past age are often before him. His 
teacher may be more familiar with Irving 's stops 
than with Kipling's, and hence is likely to suppose 
that there aren't any rules. The most misleading 
part of the parable is the correct dresser. We have 
small respect for a human clothes-horse; we don't 
wish to copy him. We do, however, respect the best 
modern usage as to stops. It may be so elusive that 
we doubt its existence, so mechanical that we get no 
joy out of it ; but if we could lay hands on a certified 
copy of Best Usage, knowing that it really deserved 
its title, really was a consensus of the best taste of 
our age, we should welcome it with gratitude, cleave 
to it, use it. 

Is such a code in existence ? Can we find any body 
of uniform practice 1 ? Here is a list of the possible 
sources of authority: 

1. Pure Reason. I cannot understand this, and 
so cannot discuss it fairly. It would be fun to work 
out a consistent interpungendi ratio if one had power 
to foist it upon the world, but the work would be 
dreamy romance. The only practical course is to 
inquire: "What do commas mean to the men who 
use them most?" 

2. Instinct. If this sounds like sarcasm, listen 
to the words of a teacher who inveighs against rules. 
"There has been too much worship and too little 
spirit in this matter of punctuation. Can we not 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 145 

induce children to think so clearly that, when the 
sentence does demand a semicolon, it is to be used, 
not as a thing possessing grace in itself, but because 
without it some comma may not possess sufficient 
suggestive force?" This most attractive religion 
represents the hope of many righteous persons. I 
would give half my wealth if I could embrace the 
creed, but since I have never seen it convey truth to 
illiterate minds, I must reject it. 

3. Authors. How can we get at them? Evidence 
of all kinds indicates that the majority (perhaps 
four-fifths) leave punctuation to the printer. Few 
of the minority would allow themselves to be called 
"authorities." When we cite authors we make the 
assumption that they are as competent in pointing 
as in diction. Any sensible disputant about the 
meaning of words would agree in advance to quit 
his opposition to an idiom if six authors of estab- 
lished fame could be quoted against him. Words 
are an author's medium; his taste about them is 
significant. But as to that arbitrary comma-code, 
perhaps he knows it and probably he does not. 

4. Rhetorics. Most of these show considerable 
faith in instinct and reason, most of them speak of 
what authors do, every one prints laws that were 
drafted by printers, nearly all rehearse rules that 
died out of use decades ago. How can we look to 
them? 

5. Publishers. It cannot be denied that influen- 
tial printers are the real developers of punctuation. 
The producers of books always have been. The 
younger Aldus 's Ratio was simplified for school use 
by Dutch printers. In America it was a Boston 
printer, Wilson, who developed a code so sound and 



146 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

comprehensive that for half a century his influence 
permeated all rhetorics. Today the greatest influ- 
ence behind our manuals is the judgment of a New 
York printer, DeVinne. Publishers have always 
been under the necessity of adopting some fixed 
method of making their books easily intelligible. 
They are sadly familiar with idiosyncrasies of copy, 
and appreciate as no author can how those oddities 
detract from effectiveness. Their office is to help a 
writer to express his personality by using their 
marks in only those ways that the world under- 
stands. The author may make a portmanteau of a 
comma; the publisher's business is to unpack. Rigid 
and wrong he may be at times, but in the main he 
is right. We could depend on any usage sanctioned 
by a majority of thoughtful publishers. The diffi- 
culty of compiling their judgments is that we never 
know how much of a compromise between printer 
and author is represented by any given book. The 
only way to discover how publishers agree would be 
to visit their offices, propose a questionnaire, tabu- 
late results. This would be an extensive labor, per- 
haps impossible; for some offices might be unable 
to extend so expensive a courtesy to the curious 
visitor. 

Is there any sixth kind of guidance? These five 
all reduce to one — publishers. If you could know the 
practice of twenty good houses in any matter, and 
should find them all agreeing, you would feel assured 
that you knew the best usage. If eighteen agreed, 
you could disregard the other two. Fifteen would 
make you confident enough. Who would stand out 
against a ruling that had eleven votes in its favor? 
Not that any decision would be binding upon a man 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 147 

who nurses prepossessions, but that it would inform 
us teachable persons of what commas really do mean 
to the great world that we hope will understand our 
composition. 

Just such a compilation of the practice of pub- 
lishers is issued every month, sent everywhere, is in 
every living-room in the country. We may not ad- 
mire the literary quality of the medium in which it 
is to be found, but that has nothing to do with the 
case. The dozens of publishers are zealous to dis- 
play current literature in the most attractive and 
easily understood way; they employ men whose life 
study has been to know what points mean to the 
world, to know what modern conventions really are, 
to follow and conform to good usage. They are con- 
servative enough to satisfy any professor. They 
may not be strong reasoners, but that very fact 
makes their counsel safe; for a reasoner about any 
matter of custom is the worst ignoramus. It may 
also be said to their credit, as Prince Hal modestly 
said of himself in comparison with Falstaff, "I lack 
some of thy instinct. ' ' They are the men who know. 
You may deny them all literary taste, all wit, all 
versatility, and may shrug your shoulders at the 
small-mindedness of any one ; nevertheless they are 
keen students of how to manipulate a few arbitrary 
symbols so that a writer's feeling may be conveyed 
with the least distortion. They build an arbitrary 
code; there is no other possibility under heaven. 
Any one of us could devise an infinitely more flexible 
and inclusive set of signals, but it would be a toy, 
useless for communicating with our fellows. We 
could extend and improve the present code if only 
the world would make us dictator and obediently 



148 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

learn our novelties. Americans, however, are so 
stubborn against useful innovation that they will 
hardly adopt the metric system. I still have to sell 
my potatoes by the clumsy bushel ; and I must con- 
sent to have my mental wares measured by the 
vulgar standard if I wish them transferred to other 
people's brains. 

Complete rules are given, to the last detail they 
are given, in our scrupulous periodicals. Authors' 
contributions are not evidence, for without a vast 
deal of consulting we could not separate the igno- 
rance of amateurs from an established policy. The 
parts of each issue — notably the editorials — that are 
known to be conformed to a system will furnish the 
facts of usage as one office interprets them. Start 
with the Nation. Though it will not furnish emo- 
tional dialogue, a single number will show examples 
of three-fourths of all the customs we may have 
doubts about. To be specific, let us hunt for a comma 
with a dash. We shall not find it. The combination 
is not to be found in the Outlook. The Christmas 
Harper's shows not one case in the prose of eighteen 
writers ; evidently the editors are severe against the 
use. "We cannot find it in the Saturday Evening 
Post, nor in Scribner's unless copy has been fol- 
lowed, nor in Life, nor in Collier's, nor in any (?) 
newspaper. I have observed it in only three month- 
lies and in a few college journals that prefer a staid 
conservatism. 

Will you decide that such a minority is right and 
that the great majority is lacking in sensitiveness 
for the finer nuances? Even if you cannot give up 
the cherished practice for yourself, will you dare 
advise others to follow it? Will you disdain such 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 149 

autnority? Hear the words of one of America's 
greatest scholars, Professor Marsh, who wrote in a 
puristic period, who was so refined as to lament the 
"corrupt" pronunciation of CKolmondeley, who said 
of the crude journalism of the 50 's: "There is no 
agency through which man acts more powerfully 
upon the mind of his fellow-man, and the influence 
of the art of printing upon language and thought 
has reached its acme in the daily newspaper." If 
he were restored to life today, would he not feel 
respectful toward our best weeklies? One of the 
most conservative American editors of influential 
magazines has declared that changes of punctuation 
in periodicals begin with the newspapers, and an- 
other that dailies like the New York Post and Times 
are safer than the monthlies. 

The present-day aggregate of clear-eyed, respon- 
sive, conscientious typography has attained almost 
complete solidarity. Notice a few examples of how 
it differs from the rhetorics: it practically never 
furnishes an instance of a semicolon before such 
words as namely, it never omits the comma before 
a vocative; only grudgingly and with a big IF will 
it put a comma between a subject clause and its verb ; 
it will not use a comma after an introductory phrase 
except to show that the words are parenthetical; it 
never tries to replace omitted words by a comma. 
In these cases it shows the tendency to be rid of the 
superfluous commas of our grandfathers. It is even 
attacking (the newspapers are fairly assaulting) 
the comma after an introductory adverb clause that 
is restrictive in meaning. In one case the vote 
is for a comma that rhetoricians are indifferent 
about, before the conjunction but. This is practical- 



150 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ly invariable, except for contrasting two words. 
Every instance in which the manuals are contradic- 
tory can be decided by submitting it to the only 
court that has jurisdiction. A jury of twenty careful 
periodicals with literary motives will give at least 
a four-to-one verdict on any case brought before it 
for trial. I may agree with one of those verdicts 
and think another absurd; what I opine is not of 
the least importance. I may rebel at such decisions 
as are pure convention; the more fool I. In other 
matters I am sane ; why not in this one ? Though I 
may privately feel that lace at my wrists would em- 
phasize my gentle breeding more than stiff cuffs, I 
sadly defer to society ? s prejudice. I ought to do the 
same in dressing my thoughts. 

We could do much more than settle the little cases 
of ''always yes" and "always no"; we could learn 
to state simple principles which will instantly fur- 
nish the "yes" or the "no" when we have denned 
our meaning. For example, shall there be a comma 
before andl (1) No, whenever it is clearly apparent 
that and is joining two similar units, whether words, 
phrases, or clauses. If the eye might at first glance 
suppose that and is joining the following word, 
whereas it is really adding a whole group of words, 
warn the eye by a comma. (2) Yes, if the two items 
(especially clauses) are to be shown as dissimilar in 
time, mood, subject, or form of emphasis. (3) Yes, 
if and is joining the last two items of a series in 
which the previous items are not joined by and. 

The sum of all such trifles is a trifle. This chapter 
would be too trifling to print if its objective were a 
sheaf of rules. My aim is very different. I have 
in minb the fearful ignorance of college youths as 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 151 

to what a decent sentence is. All instructors testify 
to it and are horror-struck by it. They are all but 
helpless before it, because the schools have given 
them so little foundation on which to build. Most 
of our colleges have to take violent measures to 
secure some degree of improvement. Why have the 
schools done so poorly? Because the textbooks say, 
"No definite rules can be given"; because those 
books that do present a fairly consistent code are 
unemphatic as to what virtues are cardinal, what 
sins are deadly; because teachers who do not know 
the facts of punctuation are thus encouraged in 
ignorance and laziness; because back of all this 
charming indifference to "hard-and-fast-rules" lies 
a most pestilential indifference to the distinction be- 
tween a comma and a period; and because the 
anemia of that indifference produces in pupils the 
extreme of heedlessness and sloth. Whether good 
usage calls for a comma with and is the pettiest 
thing in the world ; whether this group of words de- 
mands a period is the most important matter in the 
whole range of formal education. Until the entire 
body of law is known to be definite, is definitely and 
emphatically presented in texts, is a definitely re- 
quired part of every English teacher's equipment, 
so long will college men be hopelessly indefinite as 
to the distinction between part of a sentence and two 
sentences. 

All too well we can imagine the horrors of what 
injudicious persons will do when set to teaching 
punctuation as "a system precise in every detail." 
Perhaps we must acknowledge that a large part of 
them will regard a comma with and as more precious 
than a lively simile. But that is the fault of teach- 



152 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ers. Punctuation is no enemy to life and vigor. Any 
teacher whose nature would make him too zealous 
about commas is damned already, is already injur- 
ing young minds by the exercise of a dispiriting per- 
sonality. We shall make him no worse by requiring 
him to teach a precise code. We shall probably 
make him better, for his mechanical mind will no 
longer be deluded by the fancy that he is dispensing 
a manna of grace and charm. And sensible teachers 
will be just as inspiring as before; you can't put 
their powers out of gear by asking them to impart a 
simple body of useful knowledge. Indeed their 
energy will be better directed if they are not in the 
dark; they will work with more assurance and peace 
of mind. They will give our young citizens- a much 
better education. 

I have no fear that they will repress Young Amer- 
ica's spontaneity. I make no proposal to shackle 
youth with commandments or consign it to dun- 
geons of exactitude. In no way nor in the slightest 
degree have I hinted at reducing freedom of expres- 
sion,, The severest teacher of the code might still 
stimulate the fullest liberty of style. There is noth- 
ing in any paragraph to discourage license of style, 
if that is wanted in some quarters. I have no thought 
of restriction. Yet I shall be so understood. There 
will be readers whose preconceptions will cause them 
to remark when they have skimmed through, " An- 
other mechanic! Another man who would algebrai- 
cize fancy and plot the flight of winged words!" 
Not so. This is a gospel of freedom. Any author, 
young or old, is hereby urged to set down his emo- 
tions in phrases as original or graceful or lofty as 
his imagination can body forth. There is nothing 



WHAT IS A COMMA? 153 

here to hinder even ecstasy. The most highly- 
wrought verse of Noyes or the most trenchant 
phrasing of Kipling is conveyed more tellingly be- 
cause these authors have pointed according to pres- 
ent usage. I am only urging the necessity of recog- 
nizing usage in dealing with commas. A writer ought 
to choose words, not by grace of Worcester, but by 
knowledge of usage; so that his design will not be 
speckled uncouthly. He ought to put them together, 
not by courtesy of parsings, but by knowledge of 
idioms ; so that his design will not be askew. And 
with a similar motive he ought to separate them into 
groups, not through fear of some "authority's" 
precepts, but by knowledge of what points really 
mean today; so that his design will stand out clear 
and firm. 






CHAPTER VIII 

PEESENT USAGE IN POINTING 

This chapter is not for use in class. Many of the 
questions will never arise there; some of them you 
may never need to bother your head with. It is 
designed to furnish what I myself should have been 
so thankful for, a handy but ample record of all pos- 
sible ins and outs of punctuation. If some of it 
strikes you at first sight as going too much into 
details, remember that the dictionary's three col- 
umns of sub-headed discussion of but was not in- 
tended to be read at one sitting. For reference 
purposes a summary must be complete. 

The man who supervised the publishing of the 
Century Dictionary, DeVinne, got out in 1901 a 
chapter on punctuation; the critical reader of the 
Standard Dictionary, F. Horace Teall, published the 
latest edition of his manual in 1914; two English- 
men who abridged the Oxford Dictionary wrote a 
long chapter in 1906; the University of Chicago 
Manual was revised in 1915. Every rule that fol- 
lows, every least comment, is in accord with one of 
these books; nothing of importance is in contradic- 
tion to any one of them, for there is no material 
difference between them. No observant eyes can 
look about upon present usage without seeing just 
what these men have seen. 

It is in codifying that the differences occur. These 
are partly due to the kind of readers addressed. 

154 



USAGE IN POINTING 155 

DeVinne wrote for compositors, having in mind all 
conceivable kinds of printed matter; Teall is think- 
ing of all kinds of writers. Again, there are differ- 
ences due to the writers' training and kind of life, 
and to their mental make-ups. They attempt one of 
the most difficult of intellectual feats — to sort out 
and give an exposition of an arbitrary lot of social 
customs. If you have observed how some of the 
best-informed minds may go astray in giving an 
account of the uses of words, you will expect any 
writer on punctuation to fail in some ways to be 
clear or consistent or complete or shrewd in analysis. 
Doubtless my arrangement ramifies into too many 
particulars. If I were trying to inform the ignorant, 
I should follow a very different plan. But you are 
not uninformed; and, if I can judge by my own 
wishes when I consult books of reference, you will 
prefer a prolix completeness to a generalization that 
lacks just that particular point you wanted to make 
sure of. 

A word as to the different manuals that may be 
referred to if you wish to verify or to get a different 
view of what follows. Punctuation by F. Horace 
Teall (Appleton) is a product of long experience; 
sound and sensible ; it follows the plan of ' ' reducing 
the number of rules to the fewest possible." Why 
We Punctuate by W. L. Klein (Lancet Pub. Co., 
Minneapolis) is not a ready-reference manual, but 
an acute analysis of the " reasons for the use of 
marks." The King's English by H. W. and F. Gr. 
Fowler has a most useful chapter on punctuation 
which goes at length into many moot points, illus- 
trating in a chatty style and commenting with a good 
sense that never fails. It is not an orderly code for 



156 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ready reference, but is a cornucopia of wisdom. 
The safest, most usable, and most compendious 
guide is A Manual for Writers published by the 
University of Chicago Press. " Its authors are Pro- 
fessor Manly, head of the department of English, 
and John Arthur Powell, an editor for the Univer- 
sity Press. 

No faith on this globe is so firmly held as that an 
all-embracing code cannot be framed. The first — 
and the last — principal or fellow-teacher that you 
consult will warn you against any hope of account- 
ing in advance for "every possible case of doubt." 
Even Teall thinks that "probably it cannot be 
done. ' ' The answer is : " Try to find the case that 
this code does not clearly account for." Propose 
to your adviser that he prepare a list of five doubts, 
not that "could not" be provided for, but that are 
not actually provided for in the following summary. 

You will also be warned against "rigid rules." 
The reply is that there is precious little rigidity 
about these rules, that they cannot possibly hamper 
or stiffen any sensible writer in the least. They 
merely record what points signify in current usage, 
and their only purpose is to enable a writer to have 
free trade with his reader. Ignorance of them is a 
very real restriction ; knowledge of them is freedom 
from bondage. 

Some of these rules (the vocative, e. g.) are pure 
conventions, but are so universally observed that a 
writer who disregards them may be thought ignorant 
or presumptuous. Most of them, however, can be 
applied only after we have answered the question, 
"What is the meaning?" A writer who does not 
know the code distorts the meaning that he wants 



USAGE IN POINTING 157 

to convey. Hence in handling unpunctuated sen- 
tences with a class the attack must always be, " What 
did the author mean f What must he have meant f ' ' 
If a pupil can make out any case at all to prove that 
those words in that order might mean what you 
never thought of their meaning, he must have credit. 
He must even be commended. A situation of that 
sort, where teacher expected one thing and pupil 
proved that quite another was possible, is often the 
most lively illustration to a class of the great prin- 
ciple : We must know what we are trying to express. 

THE EXCLAMATION" MARK ; THE PERIOD 

The exclamation mark is used after any form of 
sentence to show that the writer is not asking a real 
question or giving a real command or stating a fact 
or wish, but is exclaiming emotionally. It is most 
commonly used thus: Oh, what a sight it was! But 
it shows the point of greatest emotion, and hence 
there are these arrangements: Alas! this is all too 
true. Good heavens! look at that! There is — alas! — 
no other way. Sometimes a series of exclamations or 
brief questions are printed without capitals. This 
is because they are to appear as one sentence, as if 
there were semicolons between. But no semicolon 
or comma is ever used with the mark of exclamation 
or question. 

Indirect questions end with a period. I asked him 
what he was doing. The period is not needed after 
headings nor after words written in a column; in- 
deed such a use is offensive to most modern printers. 
The period is not used after contractions written 
with an apostrophe (i. e., the two marks are not used 
with the same word), nor after 12th, 2nd, etc. 



158 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

THE COMMA 

Uses of the comma can be conveniently grouped 
under three heads, of which the third is very com- 
prehensive. 

I. Yes, no, and all vocatives are set off. No, lie is 
not here. Yes, it is difficult, my dear sir, to keep 
from laughing. Yes and no may be followed by 
semicolons or even periods to show that they have 
the importance of complete statements. No; that 
appears to me quite improper. Yes. After long con- 
sultation we have agreed. No comma is used between 
and the immediately following vocative. Moon, 
how farest thou? 

II. Words, phrases, or clauses used as uncon- 
nected, coordinate items of a series are separated, 
(a) Two adjectives not coordinate in descriptive 
value are not separated, because the first rather 
qualifies all that comes after it. Pretty little flower, 
queer old codger. This is extended to a series of 
three or even four adjectives if the writer really 
means to indicate that he is building up a modify- 
ing mass instead of a series of like modifiers. That 
sad patient living strength is an extreme type, (b) 
There may be a series of pairs. We have to pay 
extra for tea and coffee, cheese and salads, fruit and 
sweets, (c) When and is used only between the last 
two items, a comma must be used with it. Make 
this graphic to a class by showing that without the 
comma the series looks like x + (y + z) ; we want it 
to look like x + y + z. (d) There is usually no comma 
before and Co., though Longmans, Green, and Co. 
(e) In general no comma is to be used after the last 
item, because the meaning of such a comma would 



USAGE IN POINTING 159 

be "this last item, or each item since the first, is 
parenthetical." Sometimes this effect is desired, as 
in Cheerfully, even jauntily, he advanced to the 
scaffold, (f ) Eepetition is a form of series, in which 
the last item may be shown as parenthetical for 
emphasis: The walls, the very walls, are woven of 
dreams. 

(g) Mature writers who know just what they are 
about often employ a comma to separate independent 
statements that are brief, similar, and obviously 
parallel or contrasting in thought: The same mis- 
leading statements continue to be made, the same 
exploded falsehoods continue to be repeated. But 
this use is a delicate balance of meanings, and can 
never be tolerated in school. It is deadly there. 
(See a further discussion under The Semicolon.) 
Modern usage is chary of such a form, though it 
much more frequently indulges in a series of three 
sentences. If this is novel to you, if it seems unrea- 
sonable, forbear all logic. Accept it. It is the fact. 
In the Outlook editorials of one issue are: Belgium 
was an international minor; Greece was an adult. A 
letter from the Chamber of Commerce is always 
read, accidents are discussed, and methods of pre- 
vention are taught. It is unsafe to mention such 
possibilities to a class, though it may not be neces- 
sary to mark them wrong on a theme. 

(h) In certain cases the comma is used with co- 
ordinating conjunctions in a series. One case has 
been explained (c, above). There are two others, 
which must be prefaced by a classification. The 
following are not conjunctions at all in a discussion 
of punctuation, but are independent adverbs, to be 
used after a semicolon or period: accordingly, con- 



160 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

sequently, however, indeed, moreover, nevertheless, 
still, then, therefore. There is one big cause of con- 
fusion out of the way. Interwoven with it is the 
grammatical distinction between dependent and in- 
dependent clauses. Thus for is regularly classified 
as "independent," as equivalent to "and the reason 
is"; while because is called "dependent," equiva- 
lent to "for the reason that." Similarly though is 
called dependent in a concessive use and independ- 
ent when equivalent to but. Such demarcations are 
the subtlest of puzzles, beyond the province of mere 
grammar. They are refinements which, as Matzner 
says, cannot be demonstrated in some cases. In 
school use for is regularly subordinating, though is 
coordinating. A generation ago so was hardly ad- 
mitted to the Century as a conjunction; now it is 
in the commonest use (fearfully common in school) 
for so that, subordinating. With all these psycho- 
logical values we need have no concern. All doubt- 
ful or variant functions group themselves quite 
naturally under III, 5, as subordinating. This sec- 
tion deals only with those that link or contrast two 
equal units. Those that link are and, or, and some 
correlatives ; those that contrast are but and a num- 
ber of others often used as equivalent : yet, though, 
while, and sometimes nor and only. 

(i) The link-words are not to be pointed whenever 
it is easily apparent that they are joining two coor- 
dinate items in a series. This often extends to the 
two clauses of a short compound sentence. But if 
the reader might suppose that these conjunctions are 
joining the following word, while they really are 
joining a whole group, warn the eye by a comma. 
One or two of them had pistols, and a great many 



USAGE IN POINTING 161 

muskets lay in a berth. The comma shows that and 
does not join pistols and muskets. 

(j) If the two items (especially clauses) are to be 
shown as dissimilar in time, mood, subject, or form 
of statement, use a comma. This is often the case 
with or. Do so at once, or you shall suffer for it. It 
is most noticeable when and is used with another con- 
junction or an adverb : and so, and hence, and then, 
and not. Occasionally two coordinate words have dif- 
ferent constructions dependent on them: Eat, and 
drink this wine. 

(k) The adversatives like but might almost be 
said to demand a comma by their ''inherent qual- 
ity." I am only too well aware that this use is not 
pointed out in rhetorics and manuals, but it is every- 
where scrupulously observed. "Comma before 
the conjunction but" is always to be insisted on. 
The following from the Evening Post of one issue 
show a universal practice: not theories, but things; 
warmly human, yet critically stimulating. Ehet- 
orics hardly even recommend the following, but they 
are required by our court: She is unconquered, 
not because of patriotism, but because of the 
Channel. Not only wasps, but all the bees. The 
comma is not unusual even in poor but honest 
parents. 

(1) The handy half-truth for school use is " Put a 
comma before the conjunction between the parts of 
a compound sentence. ' ' This is usually right and 
never entirely wrong, though it countenances such 
a needless comma as His father was Irish, and his 
mother was Scotch. 

III. Parenthetical uses can be displayed more 
easily for reference by arranging them in five divi- 



162 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

sions, of which the fifth presents the most difficult 
problem in rhetoric. 

1. Appositives are set off. (a) Unless they are 
customarily thought of or spoken as a solid phrase, 
like the poet Milton, my son John, I myself, your old 
wife Joan. This last is a very questionable example, 
for it looks in print as if she were one of two or three 
wives, (b) Titles and degrees that follow a name 
are written as appositives. A. 0. Wyeth, M. P. 
J. Langdon Short, Ph.D. (c) An appositive may 
have or before it. Mrs. Tulliver's teraphim, or 
household gods, (d) Pupils always think when 
studying grammar that an objective predicate is an 
appositive, and they sometimes point it so. Duncan 
made Macbeth Thane of Cawdor. 

2. The successive items of an address and of a 
date are set off. Goldsmith was born at Pallas, 
County Longford, Ireland, on November 10, 1728, 
the fifth of eight children, (a) The comma before 
the name of a state is usually said to show an 
omitted in, but commas are not used nowadays to 
show omissions. Moreover the " omission" idea 
does not account for the comma after the state; it 
is "both sides" that needs emphasis, (b) No 
comma is used between the month and the day of 
the month, nor in such a form as in the year 1782, 
nor between the number and the street, nor before 
b.c, a.m., etc. (c) The majority of letter-writers 
and nearly all stenographers put commas at the ends 
of lines when such items occur as the heading of a 
letter; almost as great a majority still use them in 
addressing an envelope. But the use is old-fash- 
ioned, is not in favor among those whose opinion 
is worth most, and is sure to die before long, Such 



USAGE IN POINTING 163 

commas accomplish nothing but unsightliness. Peri- 
ods for abbreviations must be used at the ends of 
lines. 

Allan McCord, Esq. 
14 South Avenue 
Lancaster 

Indiana 

3. Words, phrases, and clauses used somewhat 
parenthetically are set off. Specially common exam- 
ples are however, nevertheless, too, then, indeed, in 
fact, in the second place, it seems, they say. (a) How- 
ever is nearly always parenthetical, but no expres- 
sion is in itself parenthetical. There can never be 
any rule about what must be done with this word 
or that phrase; it is always a question of "Do I 
wish to have this understood as parenthetical!" 
(b) The best judgment of today is to be sparing 
about pointing such modal adverbs as indeed, per- 
haps, possibly, because they are much more likely 
to be close modifiers in the writer's actual thought, 
and. because if he insists on expressing himself with 
so many jerky asides he tires us. In the following the 
writers are most likely using the words parenthet- 
ically : There is, indeed, no other possible reason. It 
is conceivable, perhaps, that Jane lied. Scott may 
have decided, possibly, that suicide was justifiable. 
In the following the words are close modifiers: In- 
deed you may. You can perhaps be of some assist- 
ance. There may possibly be a better road. There, is 
a story of an eminent university official who called 
up an editor's office to say that he feared he had 
omitted the commas with a perhaps, his notion be- 
ing that the word, not the thought, required point- 



164 "WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ing, (c) Always think of such words and phrases 
as questions of "both sides." Never discuss them 
as introductory. If they begin a sentence, their 
position does not necessitate a comma; it is a mat- 
ter of whether they would have two commas if they 
were transplanted to the middle of the sentence. 
This "both sides" idea is most important also with 
terminal expressions, as will be seen when it comes 
to the dash. You and your pupils will always be 
in danger unless your test is "How would it be in 
the middle of the sentence f " (d) Phrases are never 
pointed because they are introductory. Pupils are 
passionately fond of that comma and can with diffi- 
culty be reconciled to omitting it after even such a 
brief phrase as In 1856 he sailed for Europe; much 
less are they content with Through the plate-glass 
windows of his office in the tenth story of the Metro- 
politan Building we could see her funnels. But no 
comma is called for after Building. The modern 
notion is that phrases ought not to be "out of their 
natural order," that a writer ought to place them 
coherently, that commas would usually belie his 
real meaning by indicating that the phrase 
is parenthetical. (e) Occasionally a well-placed 
phrase may happen to create a misunderstanding of 
construction — e. g., In comparison with this more 
expensive food means nothing, where at first glance 
a reader might think it was this food. So the eye 
might erroneously read greeting on the deck in the 
following: But during all the greeting on the deck 
lies the body of the dead captain. Modern usage 
tolerates a comma in such predicaments if there is 
real need of disjoining a modifier — not otherwise. 
Real need is rare. In This, Gareth hearing and 



USAGE IN POINTING 165 

King, of the Khyber Rifles the authors have done 
their readers a doubtful service, (f ) Etc. is always 
considered parenthetical; also conversational tvell 
and why at the beginning of a sentence ; and usually 
conversational now is pointed to distinguish it from 
the adverb of time. Well, what do you say? Why, I 
hardly know. Now, that is just the point. 

4. Participial and other adjectival expressions 
that modify in an appositive way are set off. But 
Nat, fearing some trick, would not enter. My wife, 
pale and trembling, clasped her little ones. Struck 
by this answer, the judge paused, (a) Such parti- 
ciples are extremely common in themes — altogether 
too common. For pupils who have had Latin see 
and hear ablative absolutes so constantly that they 
slip into the way of requiring all sorts of work from 
an English participle, work for which our verbal is 
not strong enough — e. g., Trudging along wearily, 
after a sleepless night, no farm-house was anywhere 
to be seen, (b) Participles are often predicate 
adjectives or objective predicates and not to be set 
off: The wind goes whistling. The rope could be 
seen dangling. We found him hunting, (c) They 
are often close modifiers : The man walking on the 
other side sees us. (d) By a curious perversity 
pupils who are careless about Rounding the buoy, 
we started for home will put a comma in After 
rounding the buoy we started for home or in Round- 
ing the buoy was not difficult, (e) Sometimes an 
ing word that looks like such a participle is in 
meaning an ellipsis for a closely-modifying clause: 
Coming down he felt all right (="when he was 
coming down"), (f) Non-restrictive phrases are 
to be set off: His legs were thick, like an alligator's. 



166 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

The scenery was placid, with now and then some 
cottages. The room in which he sat, with its simple 
furniture. The scenery was not "placid with cot- 
tages ' ' ; the man did not ' ' sit with furniture. ' ' But 
non-restrictive phrases seldom have a right to exist; 
they usually result from ambiguous arrangement of 
words, (g) In a sentence like the following the 
comma is often omitted before the participle: He was 
fagged out; but wishing to be polite, he began a 
conversation. This is to show that wishing is not 
parenthetical after but; it is appositive before he. 
For school use, however, such a nicety should not 
be mentioned. "Both sides" is your maxim. 

5. Non-restrictive clauses are set off. Though 
he was dishonest, he was loyal. We were led to a 
little clearing, where the children had a play-house. 
These often appear as introductory or terminal, are 
often so classified; but ought to be thought of as 
somewhat parenthetical, as "both sides" matters. 
The great question always is "Does the clause modi- 
fy closely?" There is no universal formula for 
getting the answer. The most generally applicable 
test that I know is "Does the clause mean that 
particular one or that particular hind ofV As a 
matter of fact we adults "feel" that it is not re- 
strictive, and our account of that feeling is likely 
to be that there is a slight pause in reading. There 
is a pause; that is a pretty sure test for us. But 
this is vague, very often misleading, and it encour- 
ages that deadly comma-shows-a-pause notion. 
Again, we analyze our feeling by saying that the 
clause is not so essential to the principal idea, that 
taking it out would not detract essentially; whereas 
the removal of a restrictive clause leaves a mere 



USAGE IN POINTING 167 

grammatical skeleton like Make hay or No boy can 
be popular. But this too is vague and is seldom use- 
ful. For us and for the pupils there is only one test 
that I have yet discovered : that particular one. It 
applies to all varieties of clauses — thus: (1) "for 
that particular reason", (2) "at that particular 
time when", (3) "at that particular place where", 
(4) "for the particular purpose of", (5) "with that 
particular man who", (6) "in the particular way 
that." Examples are: (1) They fight because they 
are attacked, (2) He came when we were sitting 
down to dinner, (3) Look in the drawer where he 
keeps his money, (4) He died that we might be 
saved, (5) We finally detected the man who was 
making the trouble, (6) They were grouped as 
actors are at the end of a play. But notice how as 
adds another idea in the following: They were 
grouped with reference to an audience, as actors are 
at the end of a play. A pupil who has learned that 
trick of experimenting by saying "that particular" 
before the antecedent of the clause may conquer a 
mystery that would otherwise forever baffle him. I 
speak of it at length because I searched so long be- 
fore I found it, and after I had it for relatives was 
still another couple of years in applying it to all the 
others. 

Pupils always hope for a rule that there must be 
a comma before because, where, etc. There is no 
such thing. The writer must decide whether he 
means for the particular reason that, at the par- 
ticular place where. Bright students will see the 
absurdity of "Don't go for the particular reason 
that you might catch smallpox" or "He lived in 
that particular Florida where there is never any 



168 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ice." When dull ones think these sound rational, 
try the alternatives: "Don't go, and the reason for 
not going is" and "He lived in Florida, and there 
is never any ice there. ' ' They are always to inquire 
whether it seems more like that particular or like 
and, whether it limits closely or is added on. The 
" added on" test may prove more convincing for 
such restrictive clauses as I have a ring which my 
father used to wear. We found a restaurant where 
there was no orchestra. Sometimes the truth is 
readily apparent from the direct question — the fun- 
damental one — "Does it modify closely? Does it 
'run along solid' in meaning?" 

If this seems to you like depending, after all, on 
"Is there a pause?" be warned that it is nothing of 
the kind. If you can leave the whole non-restrictive 
problem half taught (and many schools have to), the 
pause explanation is the primrose path. But it is 
the path of endless error. Compare the time-halt be- 
fore the two following clauses from Kipling and see 
how debatable the questions of pointing remain : 

And once from the north where he had doubled 
back eight hundred miles. 

"There is no holding the young pony from the 
game," said the horse-dealer when the Col- 
onel pointed out that vagabonding was absurd. 

How you will pause, because you detect which clause 
is restrictive, is not the point. What will the pupil 
do when he is trying to find out which is restrictive ? 
But as soon as you apply "from that particular 
north where" and "at that particular time when 
the Colonel pointed out," you will get light. I can 
testify that the hour when I first saw the value of 






USAGE IN POINTING 169 

this test marks an epoch in my experience. Before 
that I could never make headway. 

(a) The following always introduce non-restric- 
tive clauses: (1) as and (2) since showing a reason, 
(3) for, (4) so and so that showing result. (1) He 
refused to join us, as he was suspicious of our pur- 
pose. The omission of this comma before "as that 
shows a reason" is the sure mark of an uneducated 
or unsensitive mind, and is an extremely common 
fault in school composition. (2) Since there's no 
help, come, let us kiss and part. (3) Don't hurry, 
for you have plenty of time. (4) The porter had 
been most unobliging, so we gave him no tip. The 
natives were in an ugly mood, so that our plight was 
really serious. So that showing purpose may occa- 
sionally be restrictive. The dance was cut short so 
that we might take the midnight boat (i. e., "in 
order that we might"). 

(b) Some novelists and all secondary students 
are excessively fond of additive whens and wheres. 
In this manner we all sat ruminating upon schemes 
of vengeance, when the other little boy came run- 
ning in. Her object was to gain a small port about 
two leagues distant, where she had provided a 
vessel for her escape. If used, they must have the 
comma, and the necessity for the comma can best be 
shown by explaining them as equivalent to and then, 
and there. 

(c) The relative that is usually restrictive, though 
non-restrictive uses are not rare. This is the cat 
that ate the rat that lived in the house that 
Jack built. Whoever, whatever, etc., are always 
restrictive if they are relatives. Whoever did 
such a deed ought to confess (in which whoever is 



170 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

a relative, having for its antecedent the understood 
he that is the subject of ought). Whatever he puts 
his strong hand to is sure to succeed. But in such 
constructions as Whoever he is, I'm not afraid of 
him the whoever clause is adverbial, modifying am. 

(d) Noun clauses used as subject or object should 
never be set off. That my colleague and I should 
have decided to leave our usual guide at home during 
the one successful trip of the year seemed a perver- 
sity of fate. They may be long, the eye may need a 
rest, there may be a pause, many editors still use a 
comma after a long subject, most rhetorics prefer it 
—in spite of all those pseudo-reasons the practice is 
so antagonistic to present notions that it is surely 
dying, is all but dead. Even in such occasional oddi- 
ties as Whatever is is right it is better not to try to 
make a comma do what it is not fitted to do. The 
Century prints the quotation ' ' That that is is " with- 
out a comma. Noun clauses used as appositives are 
not set off except for giving the effect of "namely" 
or "as follows." The idea that the earth is round 
was not original with Columbus. No saying was 
oftener in his mouth than that fine apothegm of 
Bentley, that no man was ever written down but by 
himself. 

(e) Clauses of comparison introduced by than, 
so . . . that, as . . . as are not pointed. He was so 
much engrossed in his delicate task of measuring the 
infinitesimal difference that he did not look up. 

(f) The introductory adverb clause is about the 
only matter in which present usage is not settled. 
When the Mogul asks for the rents which were re- 
served to him by that very grant, he is told that he 
is a mere pageant. (An adverb clause is the only 



USAGE IN POINTING 171 

kind that can properly be called "introductory.") 
Introductory phrases used to be pointed, and to this 
day there is a very prevalent feeling that if they are 
long they should have the comma. But the modern 
system knows nothing about relative length; it is 
based on disjunction in meaning, and it rules that 
after a coherent introductory phrase there is no dis- 
junction. All signs are that the clause :s going the 
same course. Most careful weeklies still insert the 
comma, but the newspapers are indifferent to it; and 
newspapers have thus far in history infallibly shown 
what the conservatives were going to do later. Their 
editors are studious to make matter easy to read, are 
more sympathetic, can venture to try experiments, 
watch each other's style shrewdly, adopt readily 
what proves advantageous. One of the most con- 
servative punctuators in the country has declared 
that what the dailies do now the weeklies will soon 
be doing. Hence little attention need be paid to 
pointing an introductory clause, though it is still com- 
mon custom. I require it in exercises, but do not 
follow it up much. Even conservatives will not find 
fault with an uncommaed clause if it is in any sense 
restrictive. Introductory clauses with as, since, and 
though are always pointed, and if clauses usually 
are. However, in the following example the if clause 
is so close a modifier within the that clause that most 
journalists would not like to break up the coherence 
with a comma : The modern notion is that if a phrase 
is out of its natural order a writer has been clumsy. 
A similar case is seen in The police, or "bulls" as he 
calls them, are friendly. A comma before as would 
be logical, but would deceive the eye by breaking 
the continuity of the whole interjected expression. 



172 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

If an author wishes a comma in such a parenthesis, 
he should use dashes to set off the whole. The police 
— or "bulls," as he calls them — are friendly. 

(g) And even if you can't see why, do as I ask. 
There would be reason in putting commas around 
the if clause, but the reasons against it are stronger : 
(1) The clause would look parenthetical, (2) and is 
not joining simply do as I ask, but the whole con- 
ditional complex idea. The comma after such an 
initial conjunction is omitted. 

(h) The main clause that introduces a direct 
quotation is set off. ' ' Quit worrying, ' ' said he, "and 
go to work." No capital is used after the interrupt- 
ing words, but the beginning of the quotation is 
capitalized. He shouted across the water, "We've 
lost an oar." No comma is used with another point, 
such as a question mark. "Where are we?" he 
whispered. "Oh, you scoundrel!" she hissed. An 
indirect quotation is regularly left unpointed nowa- 
days; quotation marks were formerly frequent in 
novels. I declared that my only wish was to help 
him. No comma or capital should be used with a 
quoted expression that is used as a component part 
of the sentence. The statement that we have "moiled 
and pothered too long" is only partially true. 

(i) Pupils of intelligence have often formed the 
habit of putting a comma at the beginning of a line. 
They will agree that this is absurd — and then do it 
again the next week. 

(j) When in doubt as to using a comma, don't. 

THE SEMICOLON 

The semicolon is used between the items of a series 
if one of the items contains a comma. A civic digni- 



USAGE IN POINTING 173 

tary, being ill, and fanciful in proportion, went from 
doctor to doctor; and having arrived at death's door, 
sent for Peter. This is not necessarily because of the 
importance of the items, but in order that a sentence 
may not appear divided into more parts than it 
actually contains, in order ttiat the main parts may 
be easily recognizable. The stock illustration is an 
editorial type of sentence containing three members, 
each of which has commas within it. Needless to 
say, students seldom compose in that style. This 
principle of the "one commaed item" is applied by 
heedful writers to compound sentences whose brev- 
ity might not seem to require a semicolon. Glance 
at the following: This must sound queer to you, and 
even though I had leisure to explain, you might not 
be convinced. It appears at first glance to consist 
of three coordinate clauses, but in fact there are only 
two. A semicolon before and is preferable, not be- 
cause of the length of what follows, but because at 
that point there is greater disjunction of meaning 
than after explain. The idea could have been well 
applied to the following, quoted from a writer whose 
style is usually crisp and clear: More and more he 
was being forgotten, though, he saw, and it was this 
which troubled him. The same rule that was given 
for a commaed series holds for a semicoloned series : 
if only the last two items are joined by and, the 
semicolon must be used with it. I saved his life from 
a bear; he mine in the Rhine, for he swims like a 
duck and I like a hod o' bricks; and we saved one 
another's lives at an inn in Burgundy. 

Its great use is to show that sentences grammati- 
cally independent are closely connected in thought. 
He can't hear; he's deaf. The struggle to plant that 



174 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

conception in young minds is harder and very much 
more important than any other labor in composition. 
We have seen that the principal objective of gram- 
mar is that conception. It could almost be said that 
the aim of all drill in punctuation is to know what 
commas are, so that they will not be used to sepa- 
rate sentences. No other idea in rhetoric has a tithe 
of the importance that attaches to grammatically 
independent, though connected in thought. It would 
be difficult to overstate either the value or the diffi- 
culty of establishing this notion as a habit of mind, 
so that a pupil will jump if he finds himself about 
to commit the high crime.* The work should be 
done mostly in the grammar grades, and some time 
it will be ; but at present college instructors have to 
battle against sentence-errors. 

One device that helps is to present correct forms 
in pairs: 

The deer paused; this was what I expected. 
The deer paused, which was what I expected. 

We needn't run; it's not late. 
We needn't run, for it's not late. 

Teach that the comma alone will never do; there 
must be either a semicolon, or a comma with a con- 
joining word. 

The converse kind of sentence-error — pointing a 
phrase or clause with a semicolon — is not so common 
on themes. In unpunctuated exercises the most 
usual sort of unwariness is with participial expres- 
sions like the stores being so low that they feared 
starvation. 

*See the sixth paragraph of the Introduction for a striking proof 
of the importance that attaches to this notion in French education. 



USAGE IN POINTING 175 

Make these two uses of the semicolon picturesque 
by calling them the ''double-comma" and the "half- 
period." The most useful maxim is "A semicolon 
never introduces anything. ' ' Pupils are fond of put- 
ting it after My dear Sir and before a quotation. 

So much for pedagogy. Only a few comments are 
required on usage. In its "half -period" function a 
semicolon always signifies that what follows is to be 
understood as having the value of an independent 
predication, though it may not be one grammatically. 
Hence authors who wish to be impressive sometimes 
separate a series of phrases, or even single words, 
by this heavy stop. 

Especially common (and often effective in skilful 
hands) is the use before coordinating conjunctions, 
and sometimes before subordinating words. This 
says to a reader, "Regard what follows as equivalent 
to an independent statement. ' ' But pupils must not 
be allowed to put a semicolon before subordinate 
expressions. Tell them that they may exercise their 
esthetic judgment after they have graduated from 
college. The word following is never capitalized. 
Yet a semicolon is regarded as so much like a period 
that dashed-off words do not require the second 
dash. He had been defeated — as was expected; he 
retrieved himself — which was not expected. Before 
a conjunction may be placed a comma or semicolon 
or period; it is a matter of the degree of independ- 
ence that is to be indicated. 

THE COLON 

The colon formally introduces a list of particulars. 
The following translation is intended primarily for 
two classes of readers: first, for those who desire to 



176 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

obtain knowledge of its contents; second, for those 

who — etc. For the pointing of an introductory- 
word before it see the discussion under The Dash. 
It is also used in a very significant way before a 
sentence: it indicates that the following statement 
is in apposition with what precedes, is explaining 
concretely what has been put in general terms. But 
the curse is at work: the severance between good 
and evil cannot be closed again, and the tragic end 
comes in spite of the efforts of Arthur and Launcelot. 
This use contributes to precision in an analytical 
style. A capital after the colon signifies that what 
follows is quoted or is of independent importance. 
Right here a baffling question arises: How can any 
inheritance-tax prevent a man from giving property 
to his children before he dies? The colon is the com- 
monest and best mark after the salutation of a letter. 
A dash after it is unsightly and is going out of favor. 
It is useful for introducing long or important quota- 
tions. It always carries the connotation "as fol- 
lows." The colon is omitted if it would have to 
be combined with a question mark. What did the 
candidate mean by beginning his composition as 
follows? "Caesar! Julius Caesar! That ironic, 
sartorial virgin of history!" 

QUOTATION MARKS 

(a) There is no indication that single marks are 
coming into favor. The all but universal practice is 
to use single marks for a quotation within a quota- 
tion. A quotation within a quoted quotation (if one 
must ever write such a thing) has double marks. No 
sensible author would write such a tangle as the 
following, though it is logically possible: "Well," 



USAGE IN POINTING 177 

said he, ' ' why do you keep repeating, ' We heard the 
old man cry, ' ' Make way for liberty ! ' ' ' f ' ' A typog- 
rapher would balk at this and would go insane if 
he had to publish that row of terminations. 
Such puzzles originate only in puzzled brains, (b) 
Ordinarily quotation marks are outside a mark of 
interrogation or exclamation, but are inside if the 
mark of emotion is not a part of the quotation. If 
only you had not said, "I am indifferent"! John 
asked, "Did you hear me say, 'Come on'?" (c) If 
the introducing words are at the end of a line, the 
comma must be after them on that line and the quo- 
tation marks at the beginning of the next line, (d) 
The greatest difficulty in themes is with such a quo- 
tation as "Come in here," he said. "It's warmer.' ' 
A comma for a period there has the primal, eldest 
curse upon it. It is the unforgivable sin. (e) If a 
speaker's sentence is interrupted, left unfinished, use 
a long dash and put the quotation marks after the 

dash. "Look!" he gasped. "Well, did " 

No period is needed. 

PARENTHESES 

Parentheses show an explanation of some word 
or statement. Since a necessity of stopping to 
explain suggests involved thought, our quick-mov- 
ing, straightforward generation is impatient of 
parentheses. They are at present being supplanted 
by dashes. 

Except for enumeration in scholarly works they 
always appear as a pair of marks following the mat- 
ter that is being commented on. Hence their func- 
tion is peculiarly plain, and there is almost complete 



178 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

agreement as to punctuation connected with them. 
This was not always so. As late as 1881 Bigelow's 
handbook enjoined the following pointing: Fifteen 
pauls, (a scudo and a half,) buonomano included. 
This is copied from the Eiverside edition of Lowell 
of 1892. Nowadays we should never see anything 
but Fifteen pauls (a scudo and a half), buonomano 
included. Such a bit of ancient history would de- 
serve no mention here if it were not that this puzzling 
doubled comma still persists to some extent in con- 
nection with a pair of dashes. The curious perver- 
sity with parentheses has been duly buried; the 
same perversity with dashes is dead, but not yet 
committed to the grave. 

The universal present ruling for parentheses is to 
use exactly the same points, in the same ways, that 
would appear if the parenthesis were removed. The 
matter between the marks is punctuated just as it 
would be if it were not parenthetical, except that a 
sentence is not capitalized and that a terminal 
comma is not used (set on by Wakem, of course). 
Of course an independent sentence made parenthet- 
ical between two sentences begins with a capital 
and has its terminal point inside the second paren- 
thesis. "Come here at once." (You can't imagine 
my speaking so firmly?) "What have you done?" 
Within a sentence there never can be any point just 
before the parentheses, except in some extraordinary 
case, like If he comes, (do you) let me know. 

Pupils seldom have a real need for parentheses. 
Indeed they rather need to be discouraged from such 
asides, because they easily fall into the way of using 
an aimless "as I said before" or "I forgot to say 
that." They will most awkwardly prevent ambig- 



USAGE IN POINTING 179 

uity of pronouns by repeating in parenthesis the very 
noun for which they have used a pronoun. And they 
are very fearful that after they have been speaking 
of a character his name will not be known to apply 
to him; hence they wearisomely append "that was 
my hero's name." 

THE DASH 

Writers whose habits were fixed more than thirty 
years ago regard the dash as somewhat sensational, 
and will employ it very sparingly or not at all in for- 
mal composition. It has an emotional function, to 
indicate abruptly-changed constructions or unex- 
pected turns of thought. "I tell thee men will laugh 
— ah!" She ended in a little scream. The — but, 
pooh! — it is not for an old man like me, etc= 

But in the last quarter-century dashes have been 
almost universally adopted as a convenient mark of 
parenthesis. Unless Carranza should do what he has 
never succeeded yet in doing — establish a competent 
government and maintain order — the next duty 
would be to occupy strategic centers. A pair of 
dashes shows matter that is more necessary to con- 
vey the real thought, that is less like a pure explana- 
tion or an aside. Dashes are less formal than paren- 
theses, do not show such aloofness. They have grown 
in favor so much that nowadays almost every page 
of staid editorials furnishes examples. The common- 
est form of this use is when the dashed-off matter is 
at the end of the sentence. Two of the members have 
opposed the action of the majority — Governor Mon- 
tague and Representative Shirley. This is so fre- 
quent in all editorials, rhetorics, and literature of 
today that it is thought of by many as a distinctive 



180 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

form. In reality it is only a species of the paren- 
thetical. 

It would be logical to use a comma after the second 
dash in cases where the comma would be required if 
the dashed-off matter were removed, as in If you can 
— and I hope you can — , we shall be much pleased. 
This would be exactly like the use with parentheses. 
But the comma looks so remote and dangling that 
printers were never willing to put it there; instead 
they evolved a practice of reduplicating, placing a 
comma before each dash. These commas were com- 
pletely unreasonable and never assisted the eye, but 
previous to 1880 few American publishers dared omit 
them, and to this day there are unobservantly con- 
servative people to whom the custom is very dear. 
Yet the custom is thoroughly dead, though the 
ghost of it may be seen lingering in the Atlantic, 
the Century, the North American Review, and a few 
college journals. The New York Evening Post, a 
most conservative journal, abandoned the combina- 
tion so many years ago that the present proofread- 
ers know nothing about it. Another theory expressed 
in some rhetorics is that a dash "strengthens" 
the comma, yet even the Atlantic and the Century of- 
fices deny all knowledge of such a use. In the spring 
of 1916 the Atlantic quit the use of "strengthened," 
and the Review of Reviews abandoned the "comma- 
dash" entirely. The combination is not tolerated by 
the author of any good manual published since 1900 
except Klein, and he admits a "quite general" usage 
opposed to his preference. The dash should never 
be used with a comma or semicolon. 

The most singular way in which rhetorics have 
lagged a generation behind actual practice is in ad- 



USAGE IN POINTING 181 

vising a semicolon before such introductory words 
as namely and e.g., where present usage puts a dash. 
They rehearse this Wilsonian rule as trustingly as 
though their highest duty was to be blind to facts. 
One author recited this credo in 1910, but omitted 
it in his edition of 1914; and two other good books 
have rejected it. All must discard it soon, for it is 
an utter untruth. 

It originated quite naturally from such a form as 
this: He is not popular; that is, he is not in the public 
eye. Here the explanation is put in the form of an 
independent, coordinate statement. That is may be 
employed so, frequently to the extent of beginning 
a new sentence. Similarly it may be argued that 
namely and words of that kind are elliptical for these 
are by name or these are as follows. If they are thus 
understood and if they are always employed at the 
end of a sentence, a semicolon is a reasonable mark. 
It is utterly unreasonable under any other condi- 
tions. (1) If you should wish to put the appositive 
matter within the sentence, you would have to sur- 
round it with a pair of semicolons, as is actually 
done in a remarkable quotation in Johnson's Diction- 
ary under namely. But no rhetorician has the hardi- 
hood to do this ; in his own text he at once employs a 
pair of dashes, putting a comma after the namely. 
There is one argument — namely, the increase of wages 
— which is peculiarly appealing. And this is the fact 
of modern usage. (2) If there is no namely (or any 
such word as viz., to wit, as), the semicolon would 
become monstrous, for it would then appear as a 
mark of introduction, as a colon. Such a function it 
has never had. No rhetorician will ever use it so in 
his writing. (3) To insist (as we must) that a semi- 



182 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

colon never introduces, and then to teach that it 
introduces a list of particulars with namely, is peda- 
gogic crime. It is curious to see how several modern 
text-makers forget their rule and exhibit present 
usage in the body of their work by employing the 
dash constantly before appositive constructions, even 
before the very words that they have listed under 
their semicolon rule. (4) The semicolon rule is con- 
trary to facts. I have examined two yards of gram- 
mars and dictionaries without. finding such a use in 
any book less than fifty years old. Of course it 
appears not infrequently when an old-fashioned 
writer's copy is being followed; even in Outlook and 
Post it is seen occasionally to introduce the equiva- 
lent of a statement. Otherwise it is a ghost of a 
former reality. 

The introductory word can be found punctuated 
with every possible permutation of comma, dash, 
and colon, but there is no body of usage to support 
most of these variations. It is unusual to find the 
colon before or the dash after, and it is illogical. If 
a handbook to which you are referring advises on 
page 10 that a colon should precede viz., look on 
pages 55 and 56, where you will see the colon quite 
properly after viz. and thus, and always after as 
follows. Namely (which I use to represent all such 
words) need not be considered parenthetical, and 
often is not in scholarly works that have to eliminate 
as many points as possible; personally I wish the 
world had taken this cue from the scholars ; but it 
has not; in ordinary composition namely is paren- 
thetical. The choice between comma and colon to 
follow namely is entirely a matter of how formal the 
introduction is to be. Hence we have the simple and 



USAGE IN POINTING 183 

obvious principle that there is a big disjunction be- 
fore namely (to point off all that follows), and a 
small disjunction after namely (to set off that mere 
word). This shows how ambiguous is the very com- 
mon practice of using a comma both before and after, 
which ought to mean that namely could be taken 
out without destroying the continuity. That is what 
the commas really do mean in the following: We 
have one great fear — the fear, namely, that you will 
desert us. That is precisely what they do not mean 
in the following: But it does indicate something else, 
namely, an expectation that they can succeed. Both 
the logic and the facts of present usage call for a 
dash before this last namely and a comma after it. 
A comma before and a colon after to ivit and viz. are 
common today, especially in legal phrasing; but the 
comma is a weak mark for such a position. The 
dash is normal. 

Present usage reduces to one simple ruling: Put 
a dash before and a comma after; use the colon after 
to show importance or formality. This is simple ; it 
is consistent with the facts and the reasoning of 
modern usage; it is always applicable, whether the 
appositive matter is terminal or medial, whether or 
not there is an introductory word. 

Perhaps the most useful function of dashes and 
parentheses is to prevent a confusing array of com- 
mas that are performing different grades of duty, 
as in He sometimes served a plain dinner, a veal pie, 
or a leg of lamb, and a rice pudding. A dash after 
dinner would show that that word is not the first of 
four coordinate items. In the following each comma 
is properly employed, but the whole series is bewil- 
dering: Only four Republicans, Coates, Grattan, 



184 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Holden, and Kissel, upheld him, the other four votes 
coming from Grady, Frawley, and Sullivan, Tam- 
many members, and Cullen of Queens. 

Dashes, parentheses, and quotation marks are the 
only points allowed at the beginning of a line. 

Only occasionally will you encounter any punctu- 
ation puzzle that is not definitely provided for above. 
There is always the possibility of some absurd con- 
struction which could be indicated only by absurd 
pointing — e.g., Why do you ask, "May I come in?"? 
In the first place, that last question mark is patently 
nonsensical. In the second place, it is the construc- 
tion that is faulty; no one ought to desire to show 
that two questions end simultaneously. So always. 

You may perchance be told that there are two 
schools of punctuation — "open" and "close"; that 
the former means getting rid of all possible points; 
that its vogue is chiefly in slap-dash newspapers; 
that the latter is more refined and is cultivated in 
the college world; that the author of What Is Eng- 
lish? is a devotee of the open system. Very little is 
heard of those terms nowadays, for they merely 
described a revolution (begun in the 60 's and con- 
cluded in the 90 's) against the copious Wilsonian 
commas. I am a devotee of nothing but the safest 
and soundest present usage. No jot or tittle of per- 
sonal preference has been admitted to this chapter. 
The code here presented is conservative, would have 
to be called close. 

Don't lug much of the treatise into class. It 
doesn't belong there. It is only to furnish you com- 
plete knowledge for emergencies, just as a dictionary 
tells you thousands of things that never come up 
in recitations — but they might. You need to know 



USAGE IN POINTING 185 

beforehand. The few big matters in school are quo- 
tations ; both sides of non-restrictive matter ; comma 
before but, so, for, as-, the difference between a 
comma and a period. This last is worth much more 
than all the rest together. 

CONSPECTUS OF PUNCTUATION RULES 

[Except for period, question mark, exclamation 
mark, and quotation marks. Numbers of subhead- 
ings do not correspond to the numbering in the 
Chapter.] 

COMMA 

Never used in connection with another mark of 
punctuation. 

I. Independent Elements Set Off 

1. Ah and oh when these are followed by ex- 
clamatory expressions. 

2. Yes and no. 

3. Nouns of address (not after 0). 

II. Items of a Series Separated 

1. Unconnected, coordinate words, phrases, or 

clauses (but successive adjectives are often 
not coordinate in value). 

2. Three or more (rarely two) short and simi- 
lar independent statements. 

3. With and or or: 

a. Between last two items if there is no 
conjunction between previous items. 



186 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

b. Between clauses if it is needful to warn 
a reader that the conjunction is not con- 
necting merely two words. 

c. Between clauses to show that they are 

dissimilar in subject, mood, time, etc. 

4. Before the adversatives but, while, though, 
yet, not, nor when they introduce clauses. 

III. Parenthetical Uses 

1. Appositives, unless they form customary 

phrases. 

2. Appositive adjective expressions, especially 

participial phrases. 

3. Successive terms in dates and addresses 

(these not being "coordinate items," but 
successive explanations — parenthetical) ; 
not to be used at the end of a line in a letter- 
head or on an envelope. 

4. Any word, phrase, or very brief clause that 

is to be shown as merely interjected : always 
etc. ; nearly always however and such intro- 
ducing words as namely, e.g. ; usually con- 
versational why, well, and now. 

5. Modifying prepositional phrases that are 
not restrictive in meaning (these are rare). 

6. Modifying clauses which are not restrictive 
in meaning — i.e., which are equivalent to a 
statement added with and : always with as, 
since, and for showing a reason; with so 
and so that showing result. 



USAGE IN POINTING 187 

7. After introductory adverb clause: always 
with as, since, though, and although ; usually 
with if; otherwise not necessary if the 
clause is to be shown as restrictive in mean- 
ing. 

8. The main clause that introduces a quotation, 
but not in combination with a question mark 
or exclamation mark. 

SEMICOLON 

1. Separates coordinate expressions if one of these 
contains a comma — the "double comma" use. 

2. Separates sentences that are closely connected in 
thought — the "half period" use. 

3. Shows that words, phrases, or dependent clauses 
are to be regarded as having the importance 
of independent statements. 

COLON 

Always equivalent to "as follows." Introduces a 
list of particulars, or a sentence that explains 
particularly a general statement. May be used 
before a quotation or after such words as namely 
to show that what follows is formally introduced, 
as being long or important. 

A semicolon between two statements means that they 
are coordinate in value ; a colon means that the 
following statement explains or gives the par- 
ticulars of the preceding statement. 



188 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 



PAKENTHESES 



Indicate added information, not strictly essential to 
the meaning. 

DASH 

1. Shows an abruptly changed construction or an 
uncompleted statement. 

2. Shows an appositive expression more abrupt or 
interjected than would be indicated by a comma. 

3. Useful for an appositive expression that contains 

a comma. 

4. A pair of dashes shows a modifying sicle-remark. 

5. A pair of dashes is specially common for apposi- 

tive matter introduced by such words as namely, 
e.g. Such matter is commonly at the end of a 
sentence, and hence only one dash appears. 

Only dashes, parentheses, and quotation marks may 
stand at the beginning of a line. 



CHAPTER IX 

THEMES 

One of the best high schools in the country used 
to have an arrangement by which English teachers 
were given a mathematics class in order that this 
easier work might relieve the tedium of theme-read- 
ing. It is a labor from which many teachers shrink. 
If this chapter can show two ways of making it 
lighter and more effective, your peace of mind will 
be conserved and your energy better applied. 

During the last few years there has been a great 
deal of discussion about how to grade themes. Every 
experimenter has produced an astounding result like 
this : twenty themes were submitted to ten teachers 
for grading; the marks on one theme varied between 
25 and 90 ; two given themes were marked 60 and 90 
by A, 80 and 50 respectively by B ; discrepancies in 
the same teaching force, among instructors supposed 
to be familiar with a common system, showed bewil- 
deringly variant estimates. The English world has 
been puzzling about uniformity; about a criterion; 
about some way of getting a body of intelligent teach- 
ers to agree that a given theme is very poor, just 
passing, or very good. In universities where twenty 
or thirty freshman instructors are reading one huge 
set of themes from one class for one kind of credit 
it has been absolutely essential to issue particular 
instructions, which readers have had to follow pre- 

189 



190 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

cisely; any other procedure, any trusting to indi- 
vidual taste, would be criminally unfair. 

Yet the universal assumption until very recently 
has been that a theme, like a story in a magazine, is 
in the last analysis ungradable ; that it is an expres- 
sion of a personality, making one appeal to A and a 
very different appeal to B; that there is no possi- 
bility of a uniform rating of its merits. Most editors 
and superintendents and business men and clergy- 
men still take it for granted that the mark on a theme 
is a literary evaluation. Perhaps you have taken 
that for granted. The first half dozen rhetorics you 
examine will convey the same impression by speak- 
ing of "self-expression" and "polishing our work." 
The most ambitious effort to get some uniformity- 
criterion, a scale devised by Professor Hillegas of 
Columbia, is based on the same assumption. It is in 
effect a set of selections graduated in literary merit 
from the zero of a thoughtless child to the 100% of 
a Hawthorne ; with this set of selections the theme- 
reader is to familiarize himself; then after a quick 
perusal of any composition he can estimate that its 
merit is nearer that of no. 7 than of no. 6, and hence 
marks it 70. This is delightfully easy, is alluring, 
and has received a great deal of attention from re- 
viewers and conventions ; but I do not hear that it is 
actually being used much. If it were a practical 
device, it would be as handy as a gravity-bulb for 
quick and precise measure of literary value. 

That is just the point: it is largely an esthetic 
measure. Is that what needs measuring in school 
themes'? Are we in the position of an editor decid- 
ing whether an article is worth purchasing? He 
thinks of four counts : strength of subject, charm of 



THEMES 191 

style, coherence and emphasis of structure, accuracy 
in such petty mechanics as idiom and sentence-struc- 
ture. Spelling and punctuation are less than noth- 
ing in his consideration, for a twenty-dollar-a-week 
proofreader can attend to such minutiae. An editor 
can easily revise poor syntax and diction if there is 
not too much of it. As to orderly structure of the 
whole, it is likely that any contributor who has a 
message and some stylistic ability will have com- 
posed his matter effectively, or that he could, at the 
editor's suggestion, alter any carelessness of ar- 
rangement. The editor is simply judging whether the 
MS. offers an interesting expression of personality. 
But every conscientious band of freshman instruct- 
ors finds that it has to pass the opposite kind of 
opinion. We have heard the explicit announcement 
from Wisconsin and Illinois ; the facts are undoubt- 
edly the same at any college where honest effort is 
guided by clear apprehension of facts. We are not 
concerned with elective courses whose objective is 
literary knack; we speak of work required of all 
freshmen. What is true for them must be more true 
of the first years of high school. All pupils do not 
have literary skill. Only a small percentage of them 
have. Quite a proportion of teachers have only a 
tincture of such talent. You very likely were on the 
board of the Ulula and you have sent a story to 
Scribner's and an essay to the Atlantic. But you are 
unusual. We average teachers have small hopes of 
literary fame. If we strive to write gracefully, we 
are apt to appear affected. If we suppose that we 
must teach pupils to write gracefully, we shall teach 
them affectation. We shall probably do a much 
worse thing — convince them that we are insincere 



192 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

and that all our talk about Addisonian charm is pre- 
tense. Our first business is care and accuracy. 

It is well to say frequently to yourself and occa- 
sionally to the class that you cannot require a pleas- 
ing style, for that is an innate quality ; that you can- 
not teach more than some faintest hints of what 
constitutes a pleasing style, for that is unteachable ; 
that perhaps a few in the class were born with a 
degree of power that is greater than the teacher's, 
just as every now and then some school football- 
player is born to be a college player of more strength 
than his present coach. What most do not possess, 
what cannot be taught, you have no right to require ; 
it is folly to require it. But what every ordinary 
child can do, what his parents and employer insist 
upon, what he must learn if he is to graduate, is to 
avoid hideous errors of spelling and sentence-struc- 
ture, and to acquire some ability to divide into para- 
graphs and to proceed in a somewhat orderly fashion 
to a conclusion. 

One man's private judgment about this is worth 
almost nothing. Don't take stock in the previous 
paragraphs just because they are in a printed book. 
There is some contrary evidence — for example, one 
teacher of girls testifies that she divides the school 
for English work, not by regular classification, but 
by literary ability. I should guess that a majority 
of principals and parents still think that themes 
ought to be graded for style. Don 't oppose the opin- 
ion of those in authority at Smithboro. Find out 
what is wanted and follow orders. Find out defi- 
nitely, or definitely interpret for yourself, what is 
the limit of deduction from an orderly and pleasing 
theme for mere mechanical errors. Inquire for that 



THEMES 193 

form of directions ; decide clearly in your own mind 
according to that form. If a theme is reasonably 
well arranged and is not dull, it deserves 100 as a 
piece of school literature; how much may be taken 
off for mechanical errors if the passing mark is 70 ? 
The 'answer from the universities, from the college 
board, from the careful preparatory schools, is 
" enough to make the mark zero." But the Smith- 
boro school may be crowded, so that most students 
must be promoted, and hence marking must be leni- 
ent ; or, again, Smithboro may have an old-fashioned 
horror of mechanics, so that the instructions may be 
"never more than 30." Then you are to resolve pri- 
vately that you will never deduct for mere prosiness 
and will seldom deduct more than 20 for ordinary 
incoherence or lack of emphasis. One other prelimi- 
nary question you are to get answered: How strict 
is the grading in this school? Compare notes with 
colleagues during the opening weeks, so as to make 
sure that your marks are not noticeably high or low. 
You have now assured yourself peace of mind by 
taking theme-grading out of the region of guess and 
mystery and worriment and setting up an arithmet- 
ical standard. In so doing you are not professing 
that you have equated charms and commas or estab- 
lished a percentage basis for personality. You have 
declined that impossible task. You have simply re- 
fused to put English on grounds that no other sub- 
ject stands on. You have safeguarded your own 
fairness ; you will be able to tell both Willie and his 
perplexed mother just why the mark was E. If any 
doubt of the justice of this arithmetic haunts you, 
reflect that our whole system of rating intellectual 
achievement is utterly inadequate; every year we 



194 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

refuse to graduate able citizens and give valedictory 
honors to those who can contribute little to civili- 
zation. But this is the best adjustment we can make 
at present. We cannot hope to set up separate stand- 
ards for English. Furthermore, you will be more 
useful if you preserve your peace of mind, and only 
by adopting one consistent, easy, invariable plan 
can you feel sure — and make pupils feel sure — that 
your grades mean anything or that there is any pos- 
sibility of their improving. 

In another closely related way you can conserve 
your nerve-power: by not taking to heart all the 
exhortation to ' ' stimulate orderly thinking. ' ' Every 
English teacher does what he can in that way, ought 
to accomplish something ; but the total must always 
be slight. Orderly thinking, like popularity and 
good nature and charitableness, is not in the cur- 
riculum. It is a rare gift. A congressman who 
can think perfectly straight is everywhere looked 
for and nowhere found. If most philosophers and 
economists can really think straight, whence came 
all the opportunities for reviewers to point out 
how crookedly they think? No, the power to think 
straight is not granted to most of us — much less can 
we instil it. Except in one sense: we can impart a 
good deal of useful instruction in setting down 
straight the thoughts that are committed to paper. 
We can, by reading good themes and orderly pas- 
sages from literature or magazines, give common- 
place minds some ability to substitute for a 3-1-2 or- 
der the 1-2-3 order. And constant reference to good 
examples will enable many pupils to show the reader 
by connectives that the thoughts are coherently ar- 
ranged. Education is at bottom a matter of drill in 



THEMES 195 

imitating processes, and English can do no more 
than to train young minds in following a few simple 
models of orderly structure. It cannot confer any 
power. We are not supermen to be charged with a 
task so ineffably hard. 

That idea of ''following simple models of orderly 
structure" has never been grasped in America, but 
we are beginning to get hold of it. Most of us have 
allowed pupils to write unoutlined, unprepared-for 
themes, thus training them in disorder. Or we have 
gone to the other extreme with elaborate subheaded 
outlines that do not correspond to any normal frame- 
work of a brief composition. Prevision is what we 
must learn — setting before children a scheme by 
which they may see in advance the progress through 
the few main divisions. Simplicity is the need that 
we must recognize — not sentences, not a dozen head- 
ings, not elaboration of major and minor, but just 
three or four or five titles of the natural groups of 
thought. Of course the active minds should be 
encouraged to vary this, to change it completely if 
they wish ; and it should be understood that no one 
is obliged to write out an outline in advance, for some 
original brains will not be helped by that process. 
But minds that get good results without a formal 
plan are planning informally. Whether the scheme 
is written, is unwritten, or is formed unconsciously, 
it exists ; a good theme always shows a design. The 
ordinary high-school writer will learn more about 
structure if an outline is suggested in advance. The 
slow and the uninventive must be provided with the 
simple plan which they will not originate for them- 
selves. The best training for getting up an outline 
is to read a good first paragraph of a theme and 



196 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

inquire what its title might be — what one thing it is 
all about ; what one thing the second paragraph is all 
about ; and so on until four or five titles are displayed 
in sequence on the board. What always needs em- 
phasis, what will produce conviction and cause im- 
provement, is simplicity. A series of four brief titles 
is proof that order is not merely heaven's first law, 
but a mundane possibility. Providing an outline is 
the surest device for securing at least the appearance 
of " orderly thinking.". 

So much for the general theory. Later in the 
chapter are some practical hints for outlining and 
paragraphing. 

Be skeptical about "placing before our classes 
examples of literary skill which shall be zt once 
models after which to fashion their own work, and 
an inspiration to ambitious effort." It would be 
idyllic to follow that program if our classes were 
composed of a few chosen girls who would make the 
effort. But most of the boys will not feel the least 
inspiration, will think you are unfair, and will sup- 
pose that you are urging them to be insincere. If 
you persist against those literal minds, you will wear 
your heart out ; you will not get the esthetic result ; 
you will perceive that you are encouraging outra- 
geous carelessness, accomplishing neither the lofty 
nor the lowly result; and then you will reproach 
yourself and distrust yourself and waste energy. 
Unless you can live on illusions, be blind to hideous 
facts, and remain indifferent to the plainest duty, 
the "literary model" plan will destroy equanimity. 
If you have one clear, simple objective — decent Eng- 
lish — your own mind will not be tortured about a 
criterion. You will have the same kind of business 



THEMES 197 

that a teacher has in any other subject, to require 
care and precision in simple intellectual tasks. You 
will not be striding the blasts or summoning spirits 
into a circle, but will be engaged in a normal peda- 
gogic employment. 

Yet beyond and above this you have a chance that 
does not exist in other subjects. You can encourage 
interesting writing. You may — you should — have it 
understood that a lively and entertaining composi- 
tion is worth more than a dull one. "Here is a 
theme that is careless in spots, so that by regular 
arithmetic it would be marked 50 ; but because it was 
really amusing it was marked 70." You never know 
what spark you may kindle by remarking, "This 
theme is so good that it ought to be handed in to the 
Liter aria board." "When you read a brisk begin- 
ning or a surprising close, quote a happy bit of 
invention or a neat turn or a clever bit of character- 
izing, you are reminding the class that you are not a 
comma-fiend. Read as many good themes as you 
can find time for, commenting on your reasons for 
approval. It is generally good policy not to name 
the writer, for that distracts attention from merito- 
rious work to a complimented person — from the use- 
ful to the harmful. Ask the class to give reasons for 
praising or blaming. Exhibit faults fully, but beware 
of ridiculing. This kind of criticism, if tactfully 
managed, is the greatest possible incentive to write 
interestingly; it introduces that vitally necessary 
element of social approval. 

"Social approval" is a large and valuable idea, 
worthy of a chapter by itself. A teacher is success- 
ful in proportion as he secures the corroborating 
sympathy of the class ; not striving to impose either 



198 WHAT IS ENGLISH' 



his own judgment or a literary standard that is un- 
known to the class; but bringing to bear the social 
pressure, convincing pupils that they are required 
to do only what their social group approves. This 
thesis is soundly and convincingly presented in S. A. 
Leonard's Riverside Monograph, English Composi- 
tion as a Social Problem. The idea is not to be 
grasped in a minute — nor in a month. Have it 
always in mind.* 

Sometimes, especially early in the year, there will 
be such epidemics of heedlessness that you may do 
well to announce that there is no opportunity for 
reading whole themes. Ilold up the bunch and say 
that half of them would keep the attention of the 
class, that one of them is as good as some sketches 
that have been sold for money, that three are better 
than many college students can write, that you wish 
you might read some of them — but that it is impos- 
sible to squander time for pleasure as long as there 
is so much wild carelessness to deal with. Then sail 
into them for the rattle-headed spelling and the coun- 
terfeit sentences. Keep them informed that commas 
do not make a theme, that often a theme which you 
mark is a much finer thing than one marked 90; 
but that if you don 't count off strictly for errors you 
will leave them uneducated. ''You have a gift for 
saying things with snap; it's a talent that many 
firms are paying good money for today ; cultivate it ; 
I will help you to make it useful by marking every 
careless theme zero.' , In any and every way that 
your tact can devise show them that the strictness 
with mechanics is only to keep them from being a 

*Compare the very interesting experiment with social approval in 
literature, the third extract in Chapter X, pages 232-238. 



,. 



THEMES 199 

laughing-stock to a critical world. Ask them what 
impression they would get of a stranger who began 
a letter: "Dear sir youde ought to of let me sel you 
thorn goods." Insist that some of them would im- 
press an employer almost as unfavorably. Try to 
show them that a splotch of ignorance on a page is 
as injurious as a stain on a white tie — no one can see 
anything but the stain. Read them what an Ameri- 
can poet, R. H. Stoddard, said of Poe's original 
handwritten copy of A MS. Found in a Bottle: 
"There was genius in everything they listened to; 
there was no uncertain grammar, no feeble phrase- 
ology, no ill-placed punctuation." 

The mark after genius is not a colon. Stoddard 
was not indicating that the genius was constituted as 
follows, but that Poe had certain commonplace abili- 
ties in addition to the great one. Keep the semi- 
colon in mind when you decide just what theme- 
reading is, and for school purposes regard what fol- 
lows as the climax. If you know what you are 
aiming at, if you have a single purpose, you will 
remove the burdensome fear of "Oughtn't I to be 
doing something else?" 

The other way of lightening labor is similar : Re- 
duce all correcting to the simplest arithmetical basis, 
read once rapidly, deduct mechanically; don't fraz- 
zle your nerves by trying to weigh what cannot be 
weighed, nor tolerate any qualms about the queer 
result of a low mark for lively writing and a high 
mark for prosy work. The secret of fair and rapid 
grading is to establish your ' ' unit error, ' ' to indicate 
the number of these in the simplest manner, to com- 
pute in a few seconds what the grade is. Here are 
the details of marking one freshman theme in the 



200 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

fourth month of the year. The unit for one class 
may be changed several times a year, is different for 
different classes and different schools ; but once you 
understand the scheme you can see what value is 
needed for the unit in your class. In the case of this 
particular theme the class has been many times 
warned about too and their, etc., has been drilled in 
simple punctuation, and has learned again and again 
of the atrocity of a sentence-error. Such errors 
as omitting a comma before so and but, mis- 
spelling its, omitting an apostrophe from a posses- 
sive count five each. Such forms as ladys, J one's 
now count two errors. Because to for too has been 
unusually stressed and everyone knows what is 
wrong the instant he sees it, it counts three errors. 
You open the theme and begin reading, not expect- 
ing to see everything that is wrong, not losing the 
run of the little narrative, but marking whatever 
you do see — that will be quite enough. The open- 
ing paragraph is not indented ; the red pencil dashes 
down a ff about where the indention ought to be. 
That first paragraph, only two lines long, is clearly 
a mere introductory sentence; down goes "No Par." 
Then there is no trouble till the seventh line, where 
you find orrange; you dash a ring around it to show 
that it must be corrected, but is not counted as an 
error. Next you find "He said for me to come 
right in and that he would cook us a supper for us." 
That is a clumsy change of construction, very dis- 
agreeable to you; you would like to write a note in 
the margin dilating upon the awkwardness ; but you 
do nothing of the kind, for the matter has not yet 
been spoken of in class. You simply put a ring 
around for us and speed ahead. On the second page 



THEMES 201 

is who 's. Well, it happens that you have mentioned 
this only twice, that you are not positive it ought to 
count double ; one line goes under it. Near the end is 
comming, and while it may deserve a treble line, you 
leniently underscore it only twice. The whole story 
is decently arranged, reasonably well told ; count up. 
Two for the paragraphing, one for who's, two for 
comming = 25; 100 — 25 = 75. Time of reading 275 
words not over three minutes ; after a year's experi- 
ence, when you are used to the system and have 
grown acquainted with the peculiarities of pupils 
and have removed a large proportion of the first-of- 
the-year carelessness, you can finish in two minutes. 

It is more than likely that this strikes you as not 
theme-reading at all but as mere addition of bits of 
scum that fleck the deep waters as well as the roily 
puddle. Part of your astonishment is due to not 
dwelling enough on ' ' the whole is decently arranged, 
reasonably well told." That is a big assumption. 
On many themes there will have to be structural cor- 
rections : of general incoherence, or of monotonous 
sentences, or of faulty time-order, or of mispropor- 
tion, or of dwindling interest, or the like. But in first- 
year work such correction should be of the simplest 
kind and only in palpable cases. You will be estab- 
lishing habits of good theme-planning, will have or- 
derly arrangement much in mind; but these larger 
matters require less attention than you think; the 
small details are very much more difficult and im- 
portant than might be supposed, even in the upper 
classes. You are not doing college work, but are 
four years below that. Memories of theme-criticism 
in college may vitiate your labor. 

You may marvel at the proposal to measure health 



202 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

and depth by counting misspellings. If so, don't on 
any account accept this method. Don't work accord- 
ing to any plan that violates your feelings. I know 
very well that in the whole opinionated range of this 
most opinionated of subjects there is no place where 
a man so insensibly slips into a habit (directed at 
first by chance, confirmed without analysis) and 
grows so accustomed to his opinions that he cannot 
entertain any objection to them. You are urged not 
to adopt anything that does not appeal to you. Be 
wary — I will go so far as to say — about adopting it 
if it does appeal to you. Think it over ; make experi- 
ments. But on no account theorize. A physician 
smiles wearily when people theorize about ailments 
and remedies, for he is so familiar with a thousand 
forms of illness which reduce to a few of the simplest 
causes of ill health. A patient's most violent tooth- 
ache is nothing in his estimation, but he is most 
solicitous about that pin-scratch. This may be more 
than an analogy when applied to the author, who 
sees every month a thousand composition defects, 
who has taught his thousand boys of all sorts under 
conditions that oblige him to rate them according to 
college-entrance ability, in conformity with the same 
sort of rating for other subjects. He finds that all 
the weaknesses can be reduced to a few simple kinds. 
Fewness and simplicity are as much a mystery to 
him as tetanus is to a doctor, but he has learned the 
fact. A physician knows that the yellow on a tongue 
amounts to nothing in itself, that scraping it off will 
produce no health ; yet he sets about eradicating it. 
He wants to produce such a change in the system 
that the tongue will grow red. So a teacher is not 
merely scraping off a symptom when he grades for 



THEMES 203 

mechanical errors; lie is correcting and vitalizing 
a mind, setting up that carefulness which is mental 
health. When you regard the little errors as an out- 
ward certificate of an inward weakness, when you 
have learned that they can be removed only by 
severe and protracted regimen, when you have for 
a long term of years observed how mental vigor is 
increased after the evil symptoms have been got rid 
of, then you may marvel at your present skepticism. 
We need not depend upon a medical parallel. 
From three quite different sources I learn that 
mediocre dramatic talent is most assisted by train- 
ing in clearness of enunciation. I cannot vouch for 
this because I never tried it. But I do know by 
experience with declamations that for several years 
I failed to get best results because I went in for tone- 
variation and pauses and dramatic changes. Boys 
of small ability — the great majority — were per- 
plexed by my efforts. I gradually learned to say, 
"Make it clear. Take time to make every word 
distinct." With mere articulation as my first pur- 
pose I had a higher average of success. The same 
sort of thing is true of all arts. Are young musi- 
cians — even those of marked ability — taught to ' [ ex- 
press personality"? They are drilled and drilled 
and drilled in finger-exercises and positions. Are 
novitiates in painting and sculpture — even those of 
special promise — exhorted to create with vivacity 
and esprit? They study anatomy and perspective. 
And they are selected individuals, drawn to the 
studios by the urge of innate aptitude. Suppose 
that all the students of a high school had to know 
the rudiments of piano-playing or sketching a scene. 
Sometimes I wonder — only wonder of course — 



204 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

whether the very fact that the average teacher of 
English is not an artist in language may not explain 
why we go to work so much more rhapsodically than 
the teachers of other arts. Occasionally I wonder 
how Milton and Kipling would teach English — after 
ten years of experience. 

I suspect they would concede something to liter- 
ary ability, would admit that two variations of 
strictly mechanical marking are proper: (1) To 
deduct something (say not over 20%) for generally 
faulty arrangement; (2) to reserve the right to add 
a bonus (say not over 20%, or at the very most not 
over 30%) for pleasing effectiveness. Then without 
distraction they could affix grades that would mean 
something in another school; they could with less 
labor be four times as useful, since they could read 
four times as many compositions; they could per- 
form a work for which the colleges would call them 
blessed. 

What should pupils write about? Always about 
familiar matters in which they have a real interest. 
It may occasionally happen that a class is so well 
acquainted with a book that they will care to discuss 
some character — what was wrong with Godfrey 
Cass? was Banquo dishonest? If at any time you 
are sure they have some thoughts which only lazi- 
ness would prevent their caring to express, assign 
such a topic ; but in general don 't. If you ever feel 
sure that their minds really contain some elemen- 
tary criticism, try that; but the experiment is of 
doubtful utility. Give them subjects that they have 
been interested in. Limit yourself further by the 
consideration that though they were interested in 
that tramp, thev were not seeing him, as you were, 



THEMES 205 

through literary lenses; they were not calling to 
mind the dainty character sketch or the dramatic 
awesomeness of a wrecked life; they were not see- 
ing through him to a pile of words about him. You 
are always in danger of beginning at the literary 
end of a subject. Don't. Begin with the thing in 
itself. What did they notice? How did they feel? 
Why did they care ? In all your explanations of how 
to go to work, how to arrange a story or present a 
picture, talk of things, of facts, of examples. You 
get nowhere by reciting from a book, "Literature, 
in order to be spontaneous, must derive its method 
as well as its material from life." Such a marvel- 
ously unsympathetic rigmarole comes from a mind 
that believes that "the art of being natural when 
we write is something that most of us have to 
learn. ' ' This dictum is too sadly true when applied 
to the jargon that we teachers use in addressing chil- 
dren. We have been so befumed in the charms of 
studied spontaneity that we quite forget how to be 
natural. Think of telling a child that when his story 
is once started "his next question is how to proceed 
so as to hold the attention of his hearers." Suggest 
no such question to him. Start with that thing, that 
queer happening, that mighty good story, and attend 
only to that. "Studying the art of telling a story 
naturally " is a vicious procedure, for it destroys all 
naturalness and creates the belief that theme-writing 
is a cult, an esoteric process of weaving intangibili- 
ties according to an unseen pattern into an acro- 
amatic abstrusity. Expect nothing from the theory 
of the text or your own expounding. Give examples. 
What is done in the beginning of this extract? For 
what particular purpose did the author start a para- 



206 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

graph there? What was the concluding sentence 
about? After we have seen that freckle-faced boy 
outwit the policeman, shall we walk home a placid 
mile and eat a placid dinner? That particular thing 
that is done in a quoted paragraph they can imitate 
or adopt or get the point of; the psychological con- 
siderations that lead us to theoretical generaliza- 
tions they cannot use. Nor can you; nor did any 
artist ever profit by theories. It is the nature of an 
inartistic mind to apprehend theories ; it is the 
creative mind which sees and represents things. The 
normal child mind is never analytical; it is some- 
what creative. It is worked upon by that particular 
example. 

Our young people are so fond of stories, read so 
many, that most of them can by purely unconscious 
imitation swing quickly through the "who", 
"where", "when," and "why" in lively dialogue, 
can keep the narrative moving interestingly, and can 
terminate with a "snapper" or significant sentence. 
They prefer story-writing to any other type. A 
good device for suggesting a plot and a climax to 
aim at is to read some humorous anecdote, requir- 
ing them to lead up to the situation by getting us 
better acquainted with the people and what they 
were about. Description is not so well liked. Try 
to keep away from inventories like "my room" or 
"a village street"; suggest life of some kind: a fine 
dog, the man I admire most, the bleachers, a squall, 
a crowded car, what makes Monroe Street interest- 
ing. Give them a chance for a bit of action or sug 
gestion of narrative to help in placing the picture 
before a reader. Don't assign "description," but 
ask for a picture of how it looked and what feelings 



THEMES 207 

it aroused — remembering that this is an age of 
"moving" pictures. Exposition is least liked. 
Usually it is necessary to give two or three topics, 
so that all may be explaining the operation of what 
they understand at first hand. Always insist that 
the main effort in such a theme is to bring out clearly 
what the reader does not know. Hence part of the 
assignment should specify who the reader is to be. 
Perhaps he knows nothing at all, like the Hawaiian 
below ; more likely he knows a good deal, as in the 
case of electric lighting. In either case a writer's 
first concern, his whole effort, is to realize just what 
it is that the reader cannot picture or understand, 
and to make that clear, working up carefully from 
what the reader does know. Tell them that school 
texts often explain processes as if for people who 
already know — thus : "In the first type of the ex- 
pository paragraph which we shall study, the main 
thoughts used to amplify the fundamental idea stand 
to each other in coordinate relation." Tell them 
they must do better than that; they must really 
' ' get something over " to a reader. If they are going 
to tell a Hawaiian boy how to make a snow fort, they 
mustn't talk about the "hoary meteor" nor about 
"the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere precipitated 
in a crystalline form, ' ' nor must they suddenly begin 
to roll up a ball. They must tell in human language 
what snow-flakes are like, how snow looks in drifts, 
how it cannot be rolled in zero weather, how feathery 
flakes become icy missiles, how big spheres of snow 
can be made and cemented. Most of the boys know 
the lingo of the garage; tell them it means nothing 
to you; you must have plain speech. Wireless or 
electric lighting or base-running rules or making 



208 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

bread or tangoing or stage scenery or sailing or how 
we know what time it is or making honey or how 
clams live — all must be explained so as to bring out 
what is not known. 

Give optional topics frequently, one for the liter- 
als and one for the fancifuls. Or set one kind of 
topic or one central situation which may be devel- 
oped in any way they like. See whether you get good 
results by letting each choose whatever topic he 
pleases. Probably they will enjoy this free choice, 
and the resulting variety is much more pleasant 
reading. Often such license has to be limited — as: 
"No journals of how I spent a week," or "No 
trips," or "Anything but a story." Warn them 
against the pointless succession of "We got to a 

hotel about eight that night. The next morning" 

and so on for a series of samenesses. Developing 
the little thing is always the best exercise. 

In general it is safest to advise against any intro- 
duction or summary or conclusion. Such things 
may be needed in labored essays (though even that 
is doubtful), but are a good deal worse than useless 
in themes a few hundred words long. Pupils easily 
get into the way of writing a preliminary nourish 
and a puttering close. Urge them to begin at the 
beginning and stop at the end. Read examples of 
ways in which members of the class arrived at a 
strong closing. 

Whether to require an outline prepared before be- 
ginning to write, whether to require notes, whether 
to resort to similes of freight-cars and geometry as 
an aid to good paragraphing, whether to advise furi- 
ous writing and phlegmatic correcting — this sort of 
thing I may have opinions about after another 



THEMES 209 

fifteen years. I have not arrived at much of any- 
thing so far. How have authors gone to work? One 
has never blotted a line and another tempers and 
emends for years. Ibsen helped himself by toying 
with a trayful of dolls and Sheridan could be forced 
into writing a mile a minute. Rhetoricus may sort 
out hundreds of little jottings; a Gettysburg Ad- 
dress may be penned without one preliminary 
memorandum. Some modern authors hire a hack 
to do their punctuating; some, like Cyrano, would 
not have their own pointing disturbed for five dol- 
lars per comma. 

Yet every one has kept his eye on unity, coherence, 
and emphasis. Every one has had a plan — no matter 
whether he committed it to paper or not. One per- 
son is dependent on that written form, as an archi- 
tect must first draw plans ; another can no more let 
his fluid scheme get on to cold paper than a spider 
can distribute its liquid before spinning a web. You 
have by instinct or habit developed a method of your 
own. Insensibly this is what you will teach. 

It seems to me that by all logic and psychology a 
preliminary outline must be a good thing. But it 
may be a mere make-believe that the writer has not 
used; it may even impede ready and fluent expres- 
sion. Your textbook will chart the process as con- 
fidently as though it were explaining how to lay 
bricks. You will do well not to share this confidence 
until your .observation confirms it. The plainest 
results can be exhibited from any set of themes. The 
how-to-obtain is quite another matter. Contrast an 
interesting, prompt opening with a verbose and tire- 
some one; contrast three sequent paragraphs with 
ten tiny and planless ones ; contrast the mere stop- 



210 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ping of a story with that bright climax that is worth 
all the rest of the narrative. Examples can be 
imitated. Theories and methods are ineffective. 
For many years I never required an outline, but 
thought I ought to. I am now requiring that on the 
top of the first page there shall be a numbered series 
of titles for each paragraph ; the directions are ' ' one 
brief title for each paragraph, so that I can see at 
a glance just why you divided as you did." This 
has commended itself so strongly that I shall never 
abandon it. Though I suspect that half the outlines 
are simply added after the paragraphing is all com- 
pleted, this does not worry me. The point is that 
each young writer feels a responsibility for naming 
some time just what he has been about. Perhaps 
it does him more good to find out as he reviews his 
theme that two paragraph titles are absurdly similar 
or that the third paragraph demands two titles. The 
plan results in better dividing — that's the whole 
point. 

And what about paragraphs ? I don 't know. No- 
body knows. A decade ago they were the central 
citadel to be attacked. Teachers directed all be- 
sieging operations at them. Sentences were simply 
outlying breastworks. Even today paragraphing is 
the subject of monographs and long chapters. My 
own feeling is this: really effective paragraphing 
is the outward sign of an inward and spiritual con- 
dition ; it shows sound thinking. No teacher, in any 
subject, can do much to develop the power of sound 
thinking. He can do no more than instruct a dull 
mind in the forms of reasoning about triangles ; can 
go no further than developing to some extent the 
knowledge of the facts of Latin syntax. Power to 



THEMES 211 

think originally — well, what do you say? Now, a 
theme is a piece of original work. We can teach a 
boy that it ought normally to appear in several divi- 
sions and can exact that appearance. We can do 
more. We can train him (after a fashion) to stick 
to one part of his subject in each chunk of composi- 
tion, to carry us from one to the next without too 
violent a jolt, and to arrive at something better than 
the middle of his subject. That is no mean result. 
It is a great big one. 

We take our youngest boys (corresponding to" the 
eighth grade or a first form) through that stage of 
development at which they are able to leave an inch 
of margin on the left (no slight achievement) and 
to present a 250-word composition as not less than 
two nor more than four or five blocks, each of which 
is indented. We speak of these blocks as para- 
graphs. We speak often of "one part in one para- 
graph," but do not go deeper into the philosophy 
than to point out that "here you begin to tell about 
what happened next morning" or "here a new per- 
son begins to do things" or "here you go to a dif- 
ferent place." The next year we insist more defi- 
nitely on having a reason for paragraphing. From 
the beginning we discourage the one-or-two sentence 
paragraph, especially the separation of that intro- 
ductory sentence of the first paragraph as if it were 
an introductory paragraph to the whole theme. We 
try to get separate paragraphs for dialogue, but 
otherwise maintain that a 300-word theme would 
seldom need six divisions. In the third year we keep 
up an incessant command, "Name the topic." We 
are always inquisitive as to why this division was 
made or why no division was made there. 



212 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Take plenty of time when you assign the first 
theme to give exact instructions as to form. Make 
everything explicit, say it twice, leave nothing to be 
taken for granted. There is to be a margin at the 
left one inch wide, and there is to be no margin at 
the right. There is to be a title set well up above 
the first line, each word of which (except articles, 
conjunctions, and prepositions) is to be capitalized. 
Announce the required length as "not less than so 
many words"; for if you say "pages," you will 
have to accept half -measure from some. At the top 
of the first page there shall be "just one brief title 
for each paragraph," numbered to correspond to 
the paragraphs. Pages are to be numbered, are to 
be arranged in the right order, are to be folded in 
one way; the name is to appear on the side you 
specify. 

You gather up the sheaf the following day and 
take it home to read. Use the very simplest marks. 
Some schools publish an incredibly long list of sym- 
bols to denote the kinds of errors. How many they 
actually use, how accurately the students know what 
they mean, I cannot say. Nor can I condemn the 
method, because I have never given it a trial. I 
have, however, some indications that it cannot pay 
for the extra care and time it demands. There must 
be an advantage to the student in finding out what 
is wrong. Not that I ever puzzle him. I never mark 
a kind of error which has not been fully commented 
on in recitations ; or if I do, I write a brief explana- 
tion in the margin. Occasionally I have to make 
sure that he sees the reason for a correction. If, for 
instance, he has one parenthetical comma and has 
forgotten the other, I draw a ring around the 



THEMES 213 

comma, run a line over to where the other comma 
ought to be, continue the line out to the margin, and 
write ' ' Two. ' ' I may draw a long line under a series 
of words on either side of a conjunction and write 
in the margin "Punct. " Sometimes I may run a 
line from an unpunctuated ivho or where out to a 
' ' Restrictive ? ' ' in the margin, but I avoid most time- 
killing memoranda and notes and queries and sting- 
ing rebukes and humorous comments. Usually a big 
exclamation mark or a huge X or a huge V will do 
more work. In marginal comments I seldom rewrite 
anything or try to do more detailed criticizing than 
just to say "Clumsy" or "Change" or "Rewrite." 
(At the end of the theme I may write a sentence or 
two of general criticism or of directions for recast- 
ing or of encouragement.) I often pass over oddities 
of diction. I sometimes judge that a form like Not 
at all, that's not true is "really" a sentence error, 
but that I will not count off for it ; though I require 
it to be rewritten with a semicolon. If there is only 
one carelessness on a theme, or if there are two or 
three rather slight faults in a good piece of writing. 
I may mark "+ = 100," which means that general 
excellence has caused the small blemishes to be ex- 
cused. Similarly if the writing is generally heedless 
I may count off somewhat more than the arithmet- 
ical total or count up the smaller errors unforgiv- 
ingly. I dash a ring around such queer things as 
"the kens of the police", "to float on the currant", 
"again once more"; but I am not much concerned 
with them. Occasionally there will be in one sen- 
tence a double error — e. g., "And, to my small 
knowledge there haven't been many bad wrecks on 
the New Haven." The phrasing is clumsy, mixing 



214 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

two idioms and conveying nothing; but that is a 
once-in-a-great-while matter compared with "two 
commas or none. ' ' So, to avoid a complicated lot of 
correcting at one spot, I indicate the punctuation 
and say nothing about the wording. The misused 
comma may seem to you insignificant compared with 
the clumsy phrasing, but it is really the greater 
error in freshman English. Such a phrasing may 
be typical of a careless mind, but is not a typical 
form of carelessness. We must watch for the ever- 
lastingly recurrent particulars, following the Law- 
renceville motto that "The only inexcusable fault 
is carelessness." On the back of some themes 
I jot abbreviated memoranda of what needs com- 
ment before the whole class — of what is eternal and 
typical. Then I give a harangue about "the same 
old things that we have been hearing all these 
months" — like laid for lay; and I try to get time 
for some of the more common kinds of clumsiness: 
"the body was cut and scratched with numerous 
finger-marks", "refrains from hitting him with the 
excuse" (with causes more absurdities than any 
other word), "since they both were in each other's 
company" (both is a constant nuisance). 

It is always the same old things. The more ex- 
perience you gain, the more you will see that all 
avoidable awkwardness and all attainable graces 
reduce to a few simple fundamentals. Do you strive 
for maturity in sentences? Attack so, ceaselessly 
putting on the board so that, and so; attack so Tie 
could not, always suggesting and so could not. In- 
veigh against the aimless repetition of words. It 
passes all belief how a pupil never hears his own 
sentences until you read them before the class ; how 



THEMES 215 

mouth after month he will persist in saying "Then 
we came to a cliff; at the foot of this cliff"; how 
he cannot give up that repeated noun; how after 
you have three times trailed your red pencil across 
one of his pages to show nine boats or ten rooms 
or eleven Indians he will submit you a page with 
seven schools on it. If you keep at him and keep at 
him, you are revising his whole mentality, making 
him attain to all the maturity he will ever be capable 
of. Would you have variety in sentences? Don't 
present any theory of monotony ; insist that all sub- 
jects must not come first; read the beginnings of ten 
babyishly similar sentences on Tom Jones's theme. 
Then plan to follow Tom up, to hound him, to get 
finally a page on which four subjects are not first. 
Bead a string of consecutive simple sentences from 
Marian Chevalier 's story, coming to the end of each 
with a thud, showing what they sound like. Read 
five consecutive compound sentences from Bob's 
description, dwelling clankingly on that infernal and, 
until the class hears what monotony is. Rehearse 
and rehearse and rehearse some decent complex sen- 
tences beginning with a dependent clause and closing 
strongly. Hold up for laughter that aimless habit 
of saying "Nothing at all was happening, when 
suddenly something portentous happened. ' ' Inquire 
and inquire and inquire whether they are not willing 
to begin with a while or a just as. Those are the 
operations that prevail upon dull minds to imitate 
something approaching a mature and varied style. 
It is always the same few old things in punctua- 
tion. You might guess from Chapter VIII that a uni- 
verse of complexities w T as before you. By no means. 
No high-school pupil will ever look uneducated in 



216 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

writing if he habitually attends to six perfectly sim- 
ple matters : commas with nouns of address, commas 
before words that mean but, comma before and 
"when the subject changes," quotations, non-restric- 
tive words, and a semicolon for grammatical inde- 
pendence. The last is worth all the rest. Mark non- 
observance five times as severely. Don't speak of 
"comma-blunders," for we have found that term 
confusing; call them "sentence-errors." Swear by 
all your hopes of success to hate them. Lay your 
hand upon the altar and vow, by all that is sacred 
in education, that you will eternally maintain feud 
against them. 

In slighter matters plan always to observe what 
are the few recurrent ways of showing ignorance or 
being tiresome. Study to avoid non-essentials, to 
have nothing to say about your prepossessions, to 
pass over some colloquialisms or downright slang. 
As a non-essential I am inclined to classify shall. To 
be sure I mark it, speak about it, ask for it ; but it is 
a foreign idiom to most of the new generation even 
in the plainest indicative. To require "He said he 
should like to go " is almost to destroy faith in your 
ruling against had ought. As a prepossession I will 
instance the case of a novice teacher who once marked 
a parsing paper zero because an eighth-grade boy 
had omitted periods, and a teacher of twenty-five 
years of experience who insists that where cannot 
mean whither, and my own self who for some years 
fought needlessly against dove for dived. As slang 
about which nothing need be said I suggest fake, 
pinch, getaway, hike, exam, dinky — why write them? 
To declaim against all ephemeral terms is to dis- 
credit yourself. If they appear in such a dignified 



THEMES 217 

setting that the class will see the humor when you 
read the sentence, they may be worth a comment; 
but a teacher who tries to taboo them as wrong per se 
will only lose the confidence of unesthetic boys. (I 
don't know about girls; perhaps they would be 
docile.) In contrast to such not-to-be-noticed things 
are a few tiresome words like near-by; nowadays 
every drug-store, all trees, all streams, all theaters 
are " near-by." However is used too much, and half 
the time as a mere loose linking, with no notion of 
its meaning. Due to perpetually appears with the 
meaning on account of; indeed it is so common that 
I am wondering if it may not establish itself. Parti- 
ciples are required to perform the most extraor- 
dinary feats — as, " Rowing out about a hundred 
yards, the stone was dropped overboard." Some 
young writers will insist that their initial a's and 
w's are "meant to be large." Others will most un- 
accountably capitalize an occasional noun; most of 
those who write latin will speak of an Inn. By some 
similar cockneyism they will repeatedly refer on the 
same theme to a man as which and a country or a 
pet alligator as who. Be on the watch for similar 
cases of faults that are persistent and common, so 
as to get emphasis on them and not be wasting time 
on what is unusual or non-typical. 

One of the best ways to save eyesight and time 
and temper is to insist that syllables be joined and 
words be spaced wide apart. Laboratory experiment 
has shown that nothing else so retards a reader as 
carelessness with spacing. 

When I deliver the weekly harangue on the week 's 
compositions, I aim at the simple, the necessary, the 
same old things that were spoken about last week 



218 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

and that are going to recur a month hence. An error 
thus denounced in public assumes an importance 
that it may not have in private conference: the 
snickers of the class are convincing. So far as pos- 
sible avoid naming the offender. This makes him 
resentful and — -here is the real reason — distracts the 
attention of the class from a principle to a personal 
"sting." The reading of extracts, good or bad, the 
reading of a good theme, the scoring of a bad one — 
all should be impersonal. 

I very seldom require rewriting of themes, but 
always have them corrected by the following time- 
saving plan: the pupil first goes through his theme 
numbering every mark I have made ; then on a sepa- 
rate sheet, numbering to correspond, he writes his 
words and sentences as they ought to be ; folds this 
in the theme and at the next recitation hands in these 
corrections. A pupil who is careful has little work 
to do; one who is careless would rather rewrite 
entire. 

In all your contriving and exhorting bear in mind 
this little allegory: Once upon a time an apostle of 
Apollo, carrying his violin, met a Wyoming sheep- 
herder who was buying provisions in a grocery 
store. "Let me play you this charming thing,' ' said 
the apostle, ' ' so that when you are back on the range 
you may try it upon your shepherd's pipe." 



CHAPTER X 

READING 

Why do people read i If that seems too universal 
to admit of an answer, narrow it down to a particu- 
lar book and a particular person. Upon the reply 
depends your whole conception of what it means ' ' to 
teach literature." If the answer seems obvious, 
close this book and ponder an hour before you open 
it again. Any solution offered to you ready-made 
is worthless, but your own earnest thoughts may be 
as a light to your feet. 

Do you happen to recall Whittier's poem, The 
Demon of the Study? When ''she" read a tale of 
woe, there were tears in her eye ; and a merry song 
would make her voice as glad as an April bird's. 
But the demon read hour after hour in the self-same 
tone. He was a ' ' reading fiend. ' ' Whittier did not 
know whence he came. We know. He comes from 
that sense of duty about literature, that feeling that 
we ought to read. All specializers in English have 
read as a business and have felt that they ought "to 
supply their most serious deficiencies." It has sel- 
dom been an irksome duty. "The stout old man 
with the greasy hat" has not taken the joy out of 
the Ode to the West Wind; he has not really ob- 
sessed us; many of us have been quite unconscious 
of his presence. Whittier had more sensitive per- 
ceptions. He felt that hidden motive — that Apollo 's 
wares are precious and that we must busily gather 

219 



220 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

heaps of them — which impelled him to read and read 
and read ; and he personified the impulse. All things 
that bore the government stamp of the kingdom of 
the muses were objects of the poet's desire. "She" 
very likely had not the least use for The Rape of the 
Loch or The Tatler. Probably there were weeks 
when she did not read a page, and never felt one 
covetous pang for the literary treasure she might 
have piled up in those days. Whittier credits her 
with being the right kind of reader. 

Should there be any such thing as an "ought" 
when it comes to reading? If a person finds no 
pleasure in The Lady of the Lake, ought he to train 
himself into a condition in which the poem is "not 
so- bad after all"? Should we as teachers feel that 
pupils ought to like Two Years before the Mast, and 
that it is sad if they prefer Potash and Perlmutter 
to Sesame and Lilies? Or should we say that read- 
ing is a pleasure, a luxury; that when we make any 
attempt to alter and educate tastes we are violating 
the very spirit that makes literature valuable? 
Even if we seem to succeed in luring the barbarians 
from the Cosmopolitan to Thackeray, have we really 
benefited them? Have we not merely adorned the 
surface? Is it not a process of painting the leopard's 
spots ? To put it concretely : if " she ' ' had not cared 
for poetry and if Whittier had put her into his Eng- 
lish class, would the results have been worth while? 

I should never have known how vehement the 
usual affirmative is if I had not once happened to 
attend a certain "round table." The discussion 
languished. The experienced teachers were hopeful 
of nothing; the novices feared to ask questions. 
After an embarrassing period of silence the hour 



READING 221 

was saved by a girl 's self-sacrifice. She propounded : 
"Why is it that pupils don't like to read the 
classics?" There was a tempest. Every one of the 
fifty-eight ladies was ready to rise and speak her 
thoughts. For the life of me I could not guess why. 
The query seemed to me as natural and as useless 
as if in a Bible class someone should ask, "Why is 
it that people don't like to be good?" I have seen 
a class enjoy The Vicar of Wakefield, but not in the 
sense in which they "like" the Saturday Evening 
Post. 

I was soon enlightened. The novice and I were 
alone in a dark pit, and torch-bearers came from 
every side. It appeared that pupils did like the 
classics. One lady asserted that she could not recall 
a single instance in her career of the failure of a 
class to like a piece of literature. No others could 
go as far as that, yet all thought the dislike was ex- 
ceptional. Imagine such a question in such a com- 
pany ! Try to imagine my Whittier question in such 
an environment. The base and cowardly cold-heart- 
edness of it would have filled the room with tumultu- 
ous pity. Worth while to try? Why, it was tragic 
that anyone should fail. I caught no least indication 
that the "worth while" question would have been 
regarded as a sane one. 

Perhaps it is not. It may be like asking, "Is it 
worth while to try to save human souls?" Since it 
is generally conceded that every person has a soul 
and that there is a way to save it, a minister who 
answered "no" would seem to deny his calling. 
Most teachers invest their profession with this 
sacred character. A boy who has been taught to 
enjoy Shakespeare has been saved. 



222 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Probably you are already imbued with this notion. 
You will find it breathing all about you from the 
moment you enter on your labors, from every col- 
league and every "suggestions for teachers." If 
you meet with discouragements, remember that there 
is a teacher in the world who does not know that he 
ever induced one human being to like a piece of 
literature. This confession may comfort and sustain 
you, because it is likely that hundreds of teachers 
are no better off. 

Why do people read 1 Excluding all of us who are 
haunted by the fiend and all who read so as to be 
able to say they have read (notice I shift to "they"), 
why do people curl up with a book? Because they 
are after pleasure, wish entertainment. No author 
wants his work perused on any other terms. No one 
who reads for any other reason is honoring the 
writer. If a friend of yours never looks at a novel 
that is more than three years old, you may feel sorry 
for him because such a great lot of pleasure is denied 
him. Do you try to convert him? Do you feel that 
he ought to be saved esthetically ? 

That is where the whole world divides into two 
classes, the missionaries and the others. If your 
instinct is, having the light, to pass it on, your life 
will be an effort to convert pupils to the beauties of 
literature. 

It is a noble instinct. The world needs more of 
your kind. But there is a chance that you will be 
more effective in proportion as you sympathize with 
the other fellow. How about being missionaried? 
Are you yourself most apt to be converted by the 
person whose manner announces, "I propose to in- 
fluence your soul " ? As for me, my soul retires into 



READING 223 

a corner at the first intimation of such a design. I 
resent any effort to lure and proselyte my spirit, and 
I have noticed that young people are singularly like 
their elders in the matter of mental autonomy. If I 
see a friend getting five dollars' worth of pleasure 
out of Siegfried or a league game, I may learn to 
covet his source of happiness, may catch the con- 
tagion; but not because of any effort he makes to 
persuade me. People who whole-heartedly enjoy 
their children or their tobacco never seem concerned 
to convert bachelors or non-smokers. Genuine de- 
light never worries about influencing other people; 
yet it is making converts all the time. The English 
Leaflet 13 contains a whole gospel of "inspiring" 
in one sentence: "I remember a very poor teacher 
of literature who lived in an atmosphere so sincere, 
so generous, so humanly sympathetic that her pupils 
left her enriched and strengthened for actual liv- 
ing." Somehow I suspect that this woman never 
coached herself to inculcate a love. It is likely that 
she simply tried to be honest and thorough in her 
daily business. 

How responsive have you been to those intellect- 
ual missionaries who have tried to kindle in you 
some appreciation of their gospels of physics or 
astronomy? Has your soul been roused to appre- 
hend the culture offered by modern science, or do 
you merely tolerate it in a benignant way? Have 
you thoroughly realized that there is a mental ex- 
hilaration in radium and Peruvian ruins and wire- 
less and the fight against cancer beside which 7/ 
Penseroso is feeble? Three years ago a boy who 
was not very keen for Milton's minor poems intro- 
duced me to a science book which had, if rightly 



224 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

read, more stimulus for the imagination than most 
of us can get from Paradise Lost. Literature is not 
the only treasure on that strand where Newton and 
Browning have to be met together if they are rightly 
met. Goethe, whose emotions could be so profoundly 
stirred by The Vicar of Wakefield, occupied his soul 
with the theory of light. May a teacher of literature 
not be in danger of assuming that the right kind of 
spirit is absorbed too exclusively in Intimations of 
Immortality? of forgetting that the literature string 
is not the strongest in the human harp? 

But granting the full worth of this desire to en- 
lighten, it must be ever borne in mind that no art is 
so difficult as converting. Billy Sunday has a gift 
that converts thousands; Bunyan and King David 
could hardly save themselves. One professor has 
the knack of turning thousands of young men into 
the paths of good reading; another can only feel 
that stony-ground agriculture will not pay in the 
long run. Imprudent and unsympathetic zeal may 
do incalculable harm. The instant you step out. of 
your own personality in an attempt "to inspire a 
love of good reading" you wrong yourself and the 
class. You may get a galvanic result — some reaction 
that is jerkily strong — but you will set up no steady 
current. You may plant seed, may add fertilizer; 
but God alone can give the increase. Thank Him 
for it if you find He has given you the gift. Don't 
get melancholy if you find yourself unendowed. 
English literature has propagating powers of its 
own. They tell me that nowadays great reliance is 
put in medical missionaries, men who do not directly 
aim at soul-saving, but who lay splendid founda- 
tions. If we unfortunate teachers, of lesser talents, 



READING 225 

will minister to the mere information of the barba- 
rians, we can feel that we accomplish something. 

To be genuine, to be frank, never to allow that 
taint of hypocrisy to enter into what we say, will 
insure against evil effects and never detract from 
good work. Few persons can be perfectly frank 
with themselves in this matter, much less with 
others. In this very chapter, for example, after all 
my revising, all abandoning of hedging statements, 
there is an irreducible element of pretense and hum- 
bug. One dreads to appear a cold, denying spirit; 
would like to echo what is so conventionally warm 
and humane; is forever tempted to deceive himself 
by imputing to himself motives which it is generally 
supposed he ought to have. I speak of this because, 
knowing that I am not an exceptional being, I must 
suppose that others in their publicly expressed opin- 
ions and advice have had a little of my weakness. 
And I think it may put heart into some first-year 
worker if I give him this hope that he is not such a 
miserable failure after all. I am sure that in my own 
first years such a word would not have lessened my 
earnestness, and would have been a real source of 
cheerfulness. You can do better when you are 
cheerful. 

You have noticed that there are persons to whom 
babies will always go and persons who are the life 
of a party. The most crafty scheming will not lure 
the little ones, nor the most eager determination add 
to a party's merriment. But patient study of bait 
and pools may enable you to get a little nearer to 
the record of that fellow who always has the biggest 
catch of fish. Think of these cases when you sit 
before a class. 



226 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

The English Journal reported three years ago 
some very interesting data that were collected in 
Illinois and elsewhere. "What do pupils enjoy?" 
was answered from hundreds of reports of class 
votes on the books read in school. The question- 
naire was prompted by the feeling that we ought to 
prescribe what pupils like, or at least that we ought 
not to prescribe what they very generally dislike. 
The same tendency has been apparent in the changes 
of college-entrance lists. Lycidas was dropped, and 
substitutes offered for Burke 's speech and Carlyle 's 
Essay on Burns. It has been contended that this is 
false pedagogy; that making things easy is a way 
of making intellects flabby. Perfectly true of 
the ordinary subjects, whose merit is that they are 
hard. But Lycidas was not written to offer difficul- 
ties; Johnson disliked it because it was easy. All 
literature was designed to give pleasure. If it is 
made an instrument of mental drill, it is — offer what 
other defense you may — being perverted from its 
function. That is the kernel of the whole discussion. 
May it not be abnormal and wrong to try to teach a 
love of literature I 

Examine yourself, for doing that honestly is the 
only way to find out about the other fellow. "What 
author were you ever "taught" to love? The man 
who could teach me to love Sesame and Lilies 
doesn't live. What percentage of teachers could 
persuade you to love The Idler or The Alchemist or 
The Task? Suppose that you are a great admirer 
of Night Thoughts, what proportion of a hundred 
teachers sitting at your feet could you convert to 
your admiration? Ninety-nine would like the Dedi- 
cation of BarracJc-room, Ballads, but that would be 



READING 227 

due — to you? Suppose that Mrs. Tingley took the 
chair and by her personal magnetism inspired ten 
to love theosophy ; should you think well of the con- 
verts or long to emulate the converter? If you are 
in a literature class, which kind of force do you wish 
operant upon yourself, that of Mrs. Tingley or that 
of the Dedication f 

The comparison ought not to be pushed. It is 
unfair and scornful. Moreover it may be objected 
that we are quibbling about a definition; that skill 
in giving literature its opportunity to charm may be 
all that is meant by " inculcating a love." Yet we 
surely are discussing something immensely more 
important than a definition. We are speaking of a 
stimulus, often a strong one, that some teachers give. 
We see it in other subjects. One teacher has in- 
spired many pupils with a devotion to algebra; 
doubtless another has imparted an interest in Latin ; 
certainly the right teaching of physics or geography 
often rouses enthusiasm. The work of ministers is 
more than an analogy: some of them are able to 
inspire a love of religion. 

Here is the point, then, where I am expected to 
smash comparisons with a logical battering-ram. I 
have not the mental strength. It appears to me that 
we are all alike; that the highest function of all 
teachers, of all decent citizens in every profession, 
is to inspire somebody with a love of something. I 
am writing this chapter just because I cannot see why 
English teachers should think themselves specially 
commissioned to shed sweetness and light on an 
otherwise dark and tasteless curriculum. We do so 
distinguish ourselves. College catalogues speak of 
"developing a taste for good literature" when they 



228 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

describe English courses, whereas announcements 
of music or history or art speak only of such unspir- 
itual matters as knowledge or proficiency. The file of 
Leaflets is pied with such gorgeous claims for good 
English teaching as: "spiritual enlarging and 
kindling", "insight into character", "inculcation 
of a love of books", "affection that springs from 
delight." Did you ever see in discussions of other 
branches any parallel to these ecstasies I 

May we not properly apply a little skepticism to a 
creed containing these extraordinary articles, and 
scrutinize the evidence ? Granted that this power 
of inspiring exists, what percentage of high-school 
teachers have it? Half of them? Make a list of 
those you know, putting a check after the names of 
the inspirers. But perhaps this is unreasonable. It 
may be fair to maintain that every teacher has some 
spark of the kindling power, and that in his work 
he ought to apply it to combustible minds. There is 
the real issue : Should all teachers have for an object 
what few can fully attain? One of us ordinary per- 
sons, with some skill in simple matters of knowledge 
or clearness, can guide a class to a reasonable under- 
standing of a book; if we are in a fine (and arti- 
ficial) frenzy of making- them-love-it, much of our 
work is vitiated; the total effect of a recitation may 
be a lesson in insincerity. Especially is this true of 
women teaching boys, because the roughest boy is a 
delicate galvanometer for detecting affectation. 

How frank and deep-rooted is this love of litera- 
ture which we are so conscious of, which we talk and 
write about so much? It has always appeared to me 
that the non-musical person who has trained himself 
to enjoy sonatas is the one who declaims most about 



READING 229 

loving music (and leaves me cold) ; while one who 
has music in his soul will rap my clumsy fingers — 
and kindle me. Aren't we English teachers in dan- 
ger of appearing to be sentimental enticers if in our 
age of steamships we play the part of sirens on 
Literature Straits! 

Only three years ago that question would have 
been considered blasphemous. Now you may hear 
affirmative answers on all sides. I subjoin three 
extracts from the English Journal for 1915. The 
first describes the danger; the second and third are 
two different ways of facing it. 

(1) A third misconception regarding English 
work is that it is the mission of the teacher of Eng- 
lish to get pupils to admire greatly a small list of 
works of good literature of a particular type, and 
that when they do not specially care for these books 
the work is largely a failure. But human life has a 
wide diversity of feelings and interests, it is em- 
bodied in personalities of every kind and type. If 
literature is an expression of human life, or if liter- 
ature is an appeal to human life, it must be as varied 
as the life of which it is the expression or to which 
it makes appeal. If a certain type of literature does 
not appeal to a pupil, it may be simply because the 
outlook of his mind on life gives it a range of inter- 
ests which that literature does not satisfy. 

Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend, 
a man who has some position and reputation as an 
educator, and in reply to some enthusiastic words of 
mine on the value and significance of poetry, he said : 
"I cannot bring myself to care much for poetry. I 
do not see why a man should care to read such stuff 
when he can read something worth while on as inter- 



230 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

esting a subject as evolution." Much of what the 
teacher presses upon the pupil's notice as the most 
valuable literature this man rejected as mere stuff; 
and yet he was regarded as a man of much intel- 
lectual ability. We need to remember that a pupil 
who in spite of all our efforts thinks that The Sketch 
Book is dull, and Evangeline silly, and Ivanhoe slow 
and uninteresting may still cherish some valuable 

intellectual interests. D 7 j a tt 

—Roland S. Keyser, 

Jamaica Training School for Teachers. 

(2) We teachers of literature find ourselves in a 
different position from our colleagues. We speak of 
literature as primarily a thing to be enjoyed. Other 
departments treat their subjects as primarily things 
to be learned. We expect our pupils to be interested 
and delighted, from the outset of their work, and all 
the way along. Our colleagues ask their pupils to 
work and learn, and, if they hold out any hope of 
pleasure, it is, "You'll like it better when you come 
to understand it ; it will be interesting when you get 
farther into it. ' ' We have got our problem clouded. 
We know well enough, we teachers of English, that 
we have ourselves had to do real work to come by 
some of our interests. And we know, too, that some 
fields of literature, some books, some authors, will 
never interest us. We don't see our task clearly, as 
the teacher of mathematics sees his. He says to his 
pupils, "Here is a piece of work to be done." He 
is not likely to say anything about interest or pleas- 
ure. If the pupil does the work, and enjoys it, so 
much the better. But pleasure is not held out as a 
bait. There is no cajolery about it. Now the danger 
about cajolery is that, though it works well enough 



READING 231 

when it succeeds, it is worse than nothing when it 
fails. Unsuccessful cajolery reacts against its 
author like an unsuccessful lie. And lying is a diffi- 
cult business, Hamlet's remark to the contrary not- 
withstanding. 

Now many of our indirect attempts to arouse in- 
terest and pleasure react against our influence 
because they fail in this way. What wonder that 
the pupil comes to disregard our judgment, question 
our intellectual weight, distrust our sincerity? Such 
a book is to be read ' ' for pleasure. ' ' The pupil finds 
it dull, even though it be a great novel, like Henry 
Esmond. He has been misguided; he has been 
told of an intellectual garden of bliss, and, lo, he 
finds no . such place, only a waste of stones and 
ashes. 

Why not assume a different attitude? Why not 
say, rather : Here are some typical books of various 
kinds. They are chosen because they have been 
approved, not only by those who make courses of 
study, but by generations of those who know, and 
like, and even those who write, books. They are an 
important part of the intellectual property of the 
race to which it is your fortune, good or bad, to be- 
long. You are expected to know them, and others 
like them, if you are to become educated — even mod- 
erately educated. They are as much an established 
part of your educational obligations as science, his- 
tory, mathematics are in your present grade, or as 
arithmetic, geography, and spelling were in your 
earlier years. You are expected to know them for 
reasons of about the same sort that you are expected 
to dress neatly, to speak clearly, to have good man- 
ners, and to obey the moral law — because your fel- 



232 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

low-men demand it of those who qualify for a certain 

stratum of social life. ^ 7 7 • m „ 7 

— Franklin 1 . Baker, 

Teachers College, Columbia University. 

(3) Sometimes the high-school course works as 
a sort of vaccination to prevent their ever taking 
literature seriously. Indeed, many of our graduates 
emerge triumphantly diploma-ed, with their old un- 
trammeled originality in spelling and sentence struc- 
ture, but with a new relief in their hearts that they 
have lived through "litercher" and may hereafter 
read what they please. And the public, which de- 
votes about 99 per cent of its influence to bringing 
about this very result, does occasionally use the 
remaining 1 per cent in sternly demanding to know 
why English teachers don't teach English and de- 
velop a taste for real "literaehoor." (It will be 
noticed that the amount of emphasis on the final 
syllable is an index to the speaker's seriousness.) 

The truth is that literature teachers are devoted 
champions of a lost cause. To change the figure, 
they are swimmers battling against an ever- 
strengthening current of seething modernity. To- 
day it is harder than it was even ten years ago to 
arouse any sympathetic interest in Milton, for in- 
stance. Some of the dead authors appear to be so 
irrevocably dead that no amount of artificial respi- 
ration can put any breath of life into their works, 
so far as the ordinary high-school student is con- 
cerned. 

# # # # 

From my previous experience with separate 
classics I had discovered that many students feel 
vaguely that these old books are forced upon them 



READING 233 

by an educational conspiracy. They do not believe 
for a moment that any normal person would freely 
choose Shakespeare's plays and the Spectator essays 
when reading for his own enjoyment. They do not 
formulate their suspicions, but they might put them 
thus: "In the undated past a group of old fogies 
put their noddles together and agreed that certain 
musty, fusty volumes should be called classics, and 
that every unfortunate youngster should finish his 
quota of this moldy diet before being allowed any 
real literary food or candy. Since then, whenever 
a board engages a teacher, it makes her solemnly 
swear to pretend that she and everybody else prefer 
the classics to all modern literature. And so the 
teachers don't dare to admit their liking for living 
authors, but have to earn their salaries by going into 
superlatives over Shakespeare and Addison and the 
other dead ones. The more a teacher praises a 
thing, the less good it is, just to read; she has to 
praise it to keep her job and prove what a great 
scholar she is. The thing for a student to do is to 
keep his mouth shut about not liking a classic, and 
just learn what the teacher wants him to say; for 
she would fail him if she knew what he really 
thought. ' ' 

There is also a prejudice against the biography 
of authors as being a useless and inexpressibly tire- 
some hodge-podge of names and dates. A student's 
impression of a composite author's biography would 
read something like this: "So-and-so was born in 
an unpronounceable, unspellable place that nobody 
ever heard of ; his parents, though poor and appar- 
ently insignificant, were people of great interest in 
literature. He was not on good terms with his 



234 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

teachers because lie preferred his own choice of 
studies and occupations to theirs ; and his fame later 
on showed how much better he knew what he needed 
than they did. By-and-by he married a woman who 
either made him superlatively happy and successful, 
or else broke his heart and crippled his genius. His 
early writings were attacked by school teachers and 
other moss-backed critics, but he won fame by touch- 
ing the great heart of the common people ; or else his 
work was very popular in his own day, but nobody 
can see anything in it now. All his life was spent in 
places hard to remember, doing things with dates 
nailed to them; and he finally died and was buried 
in another place that the teacher makes everybody 
learn. What of it?" 

•Dp ts* tF 

In addition to these prejudices against old books, 
against biography, history, and the essay, there is 
also a well-marked distrust of poetry, especially on 
the part of boys. The number of high-school stu- 
dents who voluntarily read anything more than hu- 
morous or topical verse is small indeed. Many boys 
have an ingrained dislike of poetry, because some 
teacher has overdone allegories, or figures of speech, 
or ''speaking pieces," to use the old term. Besides, 
many boys at the adolescent age manifest a fierce 
shyness, an utter revolt against the expression of 
emotions. Some poetry strips the soul stark-naked 
by its intensity of feeling. Imagine the difficulties of 
teaching it to self-conscious boys and girls. The 
high-school student is just at the age of most pain- 
ful sensitiveness: it is astonishing to learn what 
trifles cause real suffering. Even skilful and kindly 
teachers frequently jab bare nerve ends without the 



READING 235 

faintest idea that they are doing so. Bold and self- 
assured as some of the lads look, they secretly writhe 
under many forms of embarrassment. The study 
of literature, and, most of all, the study of poetry, is 
the very thing they need to free and broaden their 
sense of personality, to develop and guide their emo- 
tions. But unless they can be made to feel at home 
in what they read, it is worse than useless to them. 



Another very common difficulty is the fact that 
many children early form the dreadful habit of read- 
ing without visualizing. Their imaginations are 
atrophied, so far as the power of reincarnating a 
printed page is concerned. Some actually have 
almost no power to get the thought of a poem, a bit 
of description, or even a drama, until it is read aloud 
and discussed in class. To translate words into 
pictures, statues, perfumes, music, or human reality 
of any kind is almost beyond their power. The 
teacher has to give them constant training to develop 
their imagination. 

Pondering over these prejudices and limitations 
of the average high-school student, I decided that 
absolute sincerity and cooperation should be the two 
guiding principles of my work with my literature 
classes. My first step was to take my students into 
my confidence, get acquainted with them, and make 
them realize that I was deeply interested in their 
real opinions and would never penalize them for tell- 
ing the truth. Knowing that students love to experi- 
ment, and to do things in a grown-up way, I told 
them how the course in English literature was usu- 



236 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

ally taught, and how we were trying to improve the 
method. I made it clear that my purpose was to 
teach them how to know literature, how to read and 
judge it; and that their likes and dislikes were en- 
tirely their own affair. From the beginning to the 
end I tried to make them feel that everybody's busi- 
ness was to help everybody else without interfering 
with his personal rights, and that I would hold sa- 
credly confidential anything that they told me upon 
that agreement, or anything which they asked me 
not to share with the class. 

Day by day in informal conversations, I gradually 
led them to tell me what they thought a course in 
English literature ought to be, what kinds of train- 
ing they needed most, what are the big problems in 
studying literature. If I had expounded these ideas 
to them, they would have rejected them as part of 
the traditional stuff that teachers are paid to cram 
down the student's throat. But when they discov- 
ered problems for themselves, their whole attitude 
toward literature began to change. For instance, 
they began with a vague idea that the materials for 
such a course should all be chosen upon the basis of 
enjoyment. But when they had heard the various 
contradictory opinions in a single class about a bit 
of literature, they saw at once that no choice could 
be made that would please everybody ; and they lost 
confidence also in the old idea that only teachers like 
certain things. Then they decided that it would be 
wisest to study all the "great" things. 

It took me about two weeks to make my students 
feel that it was safe to tell me what they really 
thought, and that I was not trying to make every- 
body agree with me. No matter how rash and preju- 



READING 237 

diced an opinion was, I received it seriously, pointed 
out and had the class point out the grain of truth in 
it, and then by questioning the student and others 
tried to make them carry the idea farther. As soon 
as I felt sure that they trusted my sincerity and 
would express themselves freely to me, I had them 
write answers to a questionnaire. 

# # # # 

The students were so interested in the idea of help- 
ing me fit the course to their needs that they wrote 
from two to six pages of definite information on 
these questions. This set of pages was the most 
interesting set I ever read because of their frank 
revelation of the minds of the writers. They formed 
a very valuable index to the hundred and forty new 
personalities in my charge. I tabulated on cards the 
gist of each answer, and for some time continued 
to add discoveries, and to consult these personality 
cards whenever I wanted to wake up a lagging stu- 
dent or assign an appropriate piece of individual 
research work. The teaching of literature is funda- 
mentally a matter of interpreting different minds to 
each other ; the teacher has to know intimately both 
the book and the student before she can bring them 
together successfully. 

# # # # 

Since I laid no emphasis upon their liking the 
famous pieces of literature, but instead demanded 
that they know a great deal about it and have full 
reasons for their opinions, it was no longer a point 
of honor with the students to dislike classics. Some 
of them discovered that they could learn nearly as 
much and do nearly as good thinking about a thing 



238 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

they disliked as about a thing they liked. A good 
many of them learned to look within for the causes 
of certain opinions, frankly criticized their own lack 
of mental energy, imagination, observation, vocabu- 
lary, and the like, and set about improving them- 
selves. They gradually learned to regard anybody's 
opinion about any piece of literature as a mere per- 
sonal symptom, and often a temporary symptom at 
that, and they gained interest in looking for the 
cause of the opinion. And all the time the range of 
their enjoyment broadened. 

— Elisabeth Hodgson, 

High School, Wichita, Kansas. 

In all our thoughts about literature it is well to 
bear in mind that one of the shrewdest of English 
critics wrote an essay entitled "Is It Possible to Tell 
a Good Book from a Bad One 1 ' ' His conclusion was 
that it is not possible. But it is always easy to tell 
a good reader from a bad one. The bad one cannot 
visualize; the good one sees gorgeous tragedy go 
sweeping by. 

Have no thought about inspiration. Prepare your- 
self by reading the assigned book over and over 
again. It is astonishing how the closest familiarity 
that you can get by yourself is inadequate for the 
searching demands sometimes made by inquisitive 
youth. You will find the average pupil strangely 
ignorant of those essentials that impress you at a 
first cursory reading; while, on the other hand, some 
small non-essential, that you quite failed to notice, 
stands out in his mind like a pinnacle. Your objec- 
tive is a clear understanding of the essentials, as : 
Where are we? Who is acting? What did he do? 



BEADING 239 

Why did he do it? What kind of person was he? 
What did character number two think about number 
three? Have no fear of the most simple and obvious 
questions. Indeed you had best at first fear any 
other kind. You never know when you are going to 
uncover the most remarkable ignorance. If a pupil 
misconceives, don't set him right. Let another pupil 
do it. Perhaps the first one has an unexpected de- 
fense for a curious notion. You never can tell. Get 
them to debating. Admit no evidence of the "I 
think" kind; always exact the reference to what the 
author says. A recitation that continues for ten 
minutes as prosy as a bird-cage may unexpectedly 
open into fresh air. 

For secondary classes I am a devotee of the writ- 
ten test at the beginning of the recitation. In my 
first year's work I got into a hopeless bog with a vol- 
ume of poems. The class seemed to know less every 
recitation. The simplest outstanding facts escaped 
them. One day I announced that the next lesson 
would be a very short review ; that there would be a 
five-minute test in which they must show definite 
knowledge, expressed without the wriggling and 
looking for help that made oral recitation so value- 
less; and that I should then devote the rest of the 
hour to reading aloud, line by line, with comments 
and questions. I was not thinking of the test, but of 
the chance to force some comprehension into their 
brains. And lo ! a miracle. They studied differently. 
Somehow that thought that they were to be left alone 
in a silent test period, forced to show that they knew 
something or nothing — that made a difference. What 
they had floundered in they soon learned to make a 
path through. The written test is a great help 



240 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

for composition ; it leaves the teacher more time for 
reading aloud; it relieves him of the distraction of 
keeping a record of oral recitation. But more than 
all these combined is the training it gives in reading 
attentively. The same principle may be applied if 
a class finds any text hard to understand. Allow 
five minutes or so for a careful reading of a page in 
class, announcing that at the end of the time you will 
assign a topic for a test. When attention is thus 
concentrated, pupils overcome hard passages with 
an ease that is very enlightening. Explain the prin- 
ciple : That kind of concentration on each page, as if 
for a test, does twice as much in half the time. 

Beware of that pedagogic weakness, talking too 
much. What we say, like what the rhetoric text says, 
amounts to much less than we suppose. Our brain- 
capillaries distend, and in the heat we may speak 
well and impressively; the pupils' brains are inert. 
It is often impossible to avoid taking the floor our- 
selves, but in discussing a literature lesson it is well 
to be a mere moderator as far as one can without bad 
waste of time. Reading aloud is apt to seem waste 
of precious minutes — often is ; but what is heard is 
remembered better than what is read. So long as 
attention is alert and so long as you feel real pur- 
pose, time thus spent is valuable. 

It is with diffidence that I suggest that anything 
like a critical attack of literature is a mistake in 
secondary classes. You are steeped in it. For some 
years you have hardly thought of a play but as an 
object of critical appreciation. Many texts are 
edited in an atmosphere that reeks with the fumes of 
estimate and analysis; edited with the fear of not 
showing enough scholarly acumen. Even such rea- 



READING 241 

sonable queries as "By what means does Goldsmith 
heighten the effect of the discovery that the house 
is burning?" are on the wrong track. Steer thus: 
"How did the Vicar feel as he got near home!" 
This is not the difference between tweedledum and 
tweedledee. It is the two sides of the footlights. 
The class belongs in the audience. A normal reader 
never bothers the stage door. He always ' ' likes that 
cuss" or wonders why Soandso didn't tell. We have 
no business to call a pupil's attention to a paste- 
board rock or to an elocutionary trick that puts a 
lump in our throat. We have no right to suggest 
that Goldsmith threw down his pen at this point and 
beat his head and paced the floor before he got the 
right device. Goldsmith doesn 't belong on the stage ; 
the Vicar is doing very well alone. At least reserve 
the author for his call when the play is over. 

Annotations are sometimes a rock of offense and 
sometimes give grateful shade in a weary land. It 
is better to use them too little than too much. Every 
note is good that keeps a pupil from misconceiving 
an author's general purpose in a passage; every one 
is bad that distracts from that purpose or that su- 
peradds information. If you are studying Macbeth 
carefully, it may be barely worth while to explain 
that the "dollars" were not paid in American bills; 
to explain the etymology of the word is one of the 
most freakish crimes of pedantry. A comparison of 
an old Rolfe or Deighton edition with the recent 
work of Neilson or Schelling will be illuminating. 
Unless you are doing this sort of close study notes 
should not be kept in the foreground. Have little to 
do with verbal difficulties. The criterion that nearly 
always applies is: "Will this make the picture more 



242 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

clear?" Hence sketch-maps are often most useful. 
Not that it matters whether a certain stag escaped 
in Eife or the Hebrides, but that Scott had a map 
in his mind, and we follow his story with more inter- 
est if we have some idea of its locus. Anything that 
supplies a substratum of conceptions (like "What 
was a cross-bow 1 " ' ' The Holy Grail ? " " The French 
Revolution?") is a necessity. Anything else is likely 
to be a hindrance. The Essay on Johnson requires 
few notes. The Farewell Address will not show its 
hidden fires (it really is fiery) until a reader can 
think of many conditions in our early history. 

More valuable than class work will be any reading 
you can require or encourage as supplementary, not 
to be recited on, perhaps not even to be tested. One 
way is to assign a novel, giving a brief test on a hun- 
dred pages or more each week. In seven minutes 
you can find out whether a pupil has read attentively 
an assignment of two hundred pages, if you require 
answers with one or two details to the simplest, most 
matter-of-fact questions. Avoid the type of question 
that admits a hazy, bluffing answer; give no credit 
for a reply that might have been guessed at by one 
who had merely heard a friend's outline of the story. 
Another plan is to require reports on books selected 
by the pupil (his choice to be first approved by the 
teacher). Get pupils to sample books for you, and 
so build up a list of good ones that are generally 
liked. It is hard to judge by your own taste. I 
should have guessed that sixteen-year-old boys would 
like Kim and would find Lorna Doone too sentimen- 
tal, but the opposite is usually the case. There can 
be a system of extra credit for books read volun- 
tarily. One teacher in a private school tells me that he 



READING 243 

now gets several times as much reading done by this 
"supplementary" plan as he did two years ago in 
his ' ' dark ages. ' ' This kind is the real kind. Dis- 
section in class is less thought of than formerly — a 
statement sufficiently meaty for the end of a chapter. 



CHAPTER XI 

ODDS AND ENDS 
EHETOEIC 

Some textbook in Rhetoric is prescribed for you. 
Regard it as the foundation of all your work. Though 
you disapprove some parts, dislike some peculiari- 
ties, it must be the basis of all you can accomplish. 
It marks out where you are to build and indicates 
the kind of structure you are to raise. Follow the 
specifications until experience shows you where to 
vary the prescribed plan. The text presents a diver- 
sified lot of things as of about the same importance ; 
your task is to discover which topics are minor and 
which are major. And remember that the text alone, 
be it mastered never so thoroughly by the class, ac- 
complishes almost nothing. The principal error that 
we all make, and can never entirely get over, is reli- 
ance on the efficacy of the text. Teachers are all 
keyed up to rhetorical distinctions, so that when they 
are struck by anything the least novel they perceive 
it with excited attention. Again, a lucid presenta- 
tion of familiar notions seems to them convincing; 
what it stows in their minds is lively and operative. 
Youth is not so affected. After ten — yes, after 
twenty — years a teacher still suffers the same dis- 
mayed amazement at finding that what was under- 
stood clearly and recited upon accurately is not 
doing any work. The matter of shall and will fur- 
nishes an illustration. A boy who apprehends 

244 



ODDS AND ENDS 245 

clearly, as a theory, when to say "I shall" and when 
to say "I will" may the next week wear a question- 
ing frown over the X through his ' ' will " in a theme. 
It is the same old, unending difficulty. It is a truth 
frequently harped upon in these pages. It is a lesson 
for you. Constant repetition should teach you. It 
will do nothing of the sort. You will never know it 
till you have been through the exercises. A pupil 
will never know about shall until by repeated and 
repeated and repeated exercises his own work has 
made it a part of himself. A boy from an excep- 
tionally refined home, whose own speech was refined, 
once recited passably on this mystery of shall and 
will. On the exercise in the text (filling in blanks) 
he got zero. The class returned to the exercise, and 
he got zero. A week later he got 30% on that iden- 
tical exercise. 

Nay more. The teacher had omitted all entan- 
glements of "the form you expect in the answer," 
and all the rest of it. He was trying for nothing 
more ambitious than to cultivate the habit of "I 
shall" and "we shall" when no assurance is im- 
plied. (Schools cannot establish a complicated set 
of idioms, and ought not to try.) This simplest of 
simple changes in a fixed verbal habit is the moving 
of a mountain. To get the merest temporary results, 
as a mere drill, is an achievement. 

The text is a necessary foundation; it is not a 
structure of knowledge, however lively and sympa- 
thetic. And any part that is not sympathetic is not 
even a foundation. What is conceived in the spirit 
of critical abstraction makes no impression on a 
pupil's mind. Even the most lively and persuasive 
chapter of text can do no more than open the way to 



246 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

improvement of style. All advance upon that way- 
is a matter of practice ; no real progress can be made 
except by the use of exercises. Real development 
and lasting improvement are secured only by exer- 
cises. In proportion as you gain experience you will 
hunger for exercises, will regard text as a mere index 
to the real work, will rely for permanent results on 
the actual handling of a great deal of illustrative 
material. The rhetoric that seems to me the most 
effective one on the market (Herrick and Damon) 
succeeds largely because of copious exercises based 
on entertaining selections. 

Every year I try harder to find out when we take 
up a rhetoric topic how far back the ignorance 
reaches. One example will serve for all. " Figures 
of speech" are promptly attacked on the basis of 
"Is it good or bad!" For several years I was con- 
founded by the excessive stupidity displayed. Bright 
boys were declaring that it was "bad" to compare 
martyrs to watering pots, and failing to object to 
"The cold hand of Death stalked into our midst." 
I had to grant a certain good taste to their verdicts : 
separated from context the good metaphor may be 
ridiculous, while the bad one may have a suggestion 
of tragic dignity. What was wrong? Why must I 
always be overruling sensible boys' feelings? Be- 
cause they did not know the simple, fundamental 
truth that a figure is a comparison of something with 
something, that genius can contrive a fairly fitting 
comparison of anything in the universe with any- 
thing else in the universe, but only a rare genius 
under exceptional circumstances is allowed to com- 
pare that anything with two anythings at the same 
time. I have never been able to persuade them about 



ODDS AND ENDS 247 

the watering pots ; the best I can do is to compromise 
on: "What is compared to what? Is it compared 
to two whats at the same time?" 

You are marveling at my slowness of apprehen- 
sion, at my lack of sympathy. Then you get the 
point — that utter failure to detect underlying igno- 
rance. I can hardly believe it of myself as I spread 
it on the record. May it save you from any similar 
failure to get way down to the bottom of the trouble. 
A whole class is never stupid; once in a while a 
teacher may be. 

The dean of college theme-writing in America says 
that he always had trouble to distinguish between 
metonymy, synecdoche, etc. One day it was revealed 
to him that there was no need of knowing. Similar 
revelations have cleared several big obstacles from 
my own path. But the need of knowing the central 
fact about figures of speech — "what is compared to 
what?" — is vital for apprehending a lively style or 
for livening one's own composition. The longer we 
teach, the more we see the value of extending this 
form of exercise. All bungling and mixing of figures 
is primarily a failure to know "what is compared to 
what." 

I am very skeptical about the wisdom of "culti- 
vating a vocabulary, ' ' because it may result in such 
testimony as this, written by an eighth-grader: 
"This year we have not done much writing as we 
have been very busy on other subjects. . . . We also 
had some large words to digest among them, "Cam- 
panology", "Peripatetic." Much can be said on 
both sides ; all depends on the practical sense of the 
teacher. I will content myself with one observation : 
Searching for an idea is always a useful occupation, 






248 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

even if the hunt is vain ; but a meal of big words may 
not digest. 

I am very skeptical about the wisdom of finding 
errors in selections from Thackeray, Kipling, Scott, 
et al. In the first place, they are probably so unim- 
portant that you have no time for them. Secondly, 
there is always the peril that the author may have 
known what he was about. 

We are all too likely to forget that the models 
introduced (selections from authors) are parts. The 
opening of a book, the description of a room, the 
paragraph that summarizes, the page of dialogue — 
all are fragments of a large whole. They are models 
only in certain aspects. The motifs behind them and 
the architecture to which they conform may be an- 
tipodal to any sincere effort that a child should make. 
A volume of short examples of skilful writing has 
recently appeared — an excellent and much needed 
device. But they are much too long and they are 
still too obviously fragments. Try to find a few 
short models to put before the class, samples of 
something like their kind of subject matter. How 
about the real thing — the best compositions written 
by members of the class! How about the school 
theme as a somewhat unreal product, which may in 
time be regarded as we now regard "samplers"? 
How about an effort to make themes a bit more real 
by assigning topics that might be the burden of 
actual letters or a living desire to persuade someone 
to do what you want? 

HISTORY OF LITERATURE 

It is often argued that a history of literature 
should not be attempted in schools, because we have 



ODDS AND ENDS 249 

to deal with such tabloids of development, such mor- 
sels of criticism, such a pile of opinion that cannot 
be based on reading. The effect of unentertaining 
biography has been humorously described on page 
233, and other objections, unquestionably valid, could 
be adduced. But, after all, these objections apply 
equally to an outline of American history, and the 
schools know that that study is one of the most val- 
uable subjects in the curriculum. So experience 
shows that the right history of literature, if rightly 
handled, is a valuable, an almost indispensable, part 
of a school course in English. 

Most texts are vitiated by critical phraseology and 
the unsympathetic use of abstract terms. If you are 
allowed to choose, decide against a book which says 
that the Saxons ' ' worshiped gods who were the per- 
sonification of the forces of nature" and choose the 
one which says that they made the Christian mission- 
aries preach on a little island in the open air be- 
cause ' ' they had no idea of hearing strange teachings 
under a roof where magic might easily overpower 
them. ' ' The difference between those two presenta- 
tions is the difference between sleep and waking. 
Discard the book that refers abstractly to Gold- 
smith's eccentricities and adopt the one that names 
the scarlet breeches. Try to gather anecdotes and 
striking facts about authors ; aim at some picture of 
them as persons; endeavor to convey a definite im- 
pression about the one most striking feature of an 
author's work, rather than criticism and estimate 
and catalogue of names. It is much better to omit 
half the writers and concentrate on the big names 
than to secure an indiscriminate blend of many au- 
thors. A chart will do more in a minute to rescue 



250 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Marlowe from the twelfth century than half an hour 
of rehearsing dates. 

MEMOEIZING 

All my life I have regretted that in my youth I 
.did very little memorizing. Men without any pride 
in literary attainments have been glad of little poems 
or passages that became theirs in school. Tell your 
classes such testimony. The why of it is harder to 
present. When time can be spared, assign a memory 
lesson. 

TESTS 

It is better to have short and easy lessons, strictly 
graded, than longer assignments that are loosely 
accounted for. The same principle holds for exami- 
nations. Fairly simple and direct questions, graded 
more strictly, are better evidence of a pupil's knowl- 
edge and better training for him. He is spurred up 
by finding he did not know the easy topic ; disgruntled 
and self-excusing if he thinks he failed because of 
catch-questions. Every English examination (unless 
it is mere grammar) must be understood to be a test 
in writing. Perfect knowledge and careless writing 
may be worth anywhere from 60 to 0, according to 
circumstances. It ought to be 0. 

Always plan tests and examinations with a view 
to easy grading — i.e., how much each part is going 
to count, and how definite are the units that you have 
a right to require. 

Don't make an invalid of yourself by correcting 
papers. The more you can handle, the better. But 
make a time limit of reasonable hours and refuse to 
be killed. Study ways of speeding up the correcting. 
Some sets of class tests can be graded in very short 



ODDS AND ENDS 251 

order, and with justice to all. You may pause to see 
if Susie has a sentence-error, but Algernon's paper 
shows at a glance that it is worth 100. Don't let the 
conscience destroy the nerves. Set an arbitrary 
standard (a good brain should have known enough, 
e.g., to put in reasonable order four points out of a 
possible six) and grade mechanically, always reserv- 
ing the right, if it doesn't take extra time, to add a 
little credit for an original handling. If you have 
required a long exercise to be written out, don't try 
to read the entire paper. Grade on the basis of a 
selected fourth or fifth of the work. Find the quick 
way. The excessive amount of time and nerve-force 
used by some teachers in marking papers is suicidal. 
Work easily. Keep the mill running. Never stop to 
debate the " mightn't I be unjust?" Always study 
for serenity and celerity. 

STEMMING THE TIDE 

Have nothing to do with the crusaders who fight 
for logical purity or academic nicety or lexicographi- 
cal sovereignty. You have too much else to attend 
to. You will need to slaughter "I seen" and "they 
done," but you can refuse to notice those subtleties 
of long u's and broad a's and "guess," and of dic- 
tion generally. In no department are most of us so 
wrong-headed as in pronunciation. To try to drill a 
class in "rule" and "laugh," where those sounds 
are not native, is to destroy the respect of pupils for 
your judgment in other matters. You may have to 
insist on "picturesque" in three syllables, because 
no educated human being pronounces it in four ; but 
you are not to inculcate " oc to pus ' ' just because that 
is the only pronunciation given by the Century. 



252 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Don't even waste energy on stemming the tide of "it 
is me." Never use the logic of these tide-stemmers 
as a weapon. The fact that is never takes an object 
is no guarantee that "it's me" is wrong. "Seen" 
is not vulgar because of any grammatical ratiocina- 
tion ; it happens that careful people do not use it as 
a preterit; just as it merely happens that present- 
day collars are not ruffs. 

CHARITY 

Remember that The Spectator was in its day the 
new and non-classical thing, the ephemeral frippery 
of its age. It is safe now to put Tom Sawyer on our 
reading lists; imagine the hardihood of doing it 
twenty-five years ago. The taste of the average 
reader may not be so much in need of directing as we 
think. 

Be patient with what appears so stupid. The next 
time you are tempted to complain of the dullness of 
pupils sit down for an hour with something you know 
nothing about — say electrical potential, or our fed- 
eral judiciary, or "selling short," or what "rhythm" 
means as applied to French verse. By the time you 
have attained a crystal-clear conception you will feel 
charitable toward the mental failure of a child who 
has not grasped a new idea. 

KEEPING INFORMED 

Resolve at the outset, and renew the resolution 
frequently, not to be a victim of pedagogic sclerosis. 
In no subject is it so easy to harden into wrong con- 
victions. "What begins as a mere choice or impulse 
may in time grow to seem a momentous principle. 

Subscribe to the English Journal, a monthly pub- 



ODDS AND ENDS 253 

lished at the University of Chicago Press, at $2.50 
per year. English is at present a welter of opinions. 
Changes are upon us and more are coming. You 
will be more sure of yourself if you follow develop- 
ments. This book gives frequent evidence of how 
useful the Journal has been to the author. 

The Bulletin of the Illinois Association, a leaflet 
published eight times a year, contains many articles 
of a practical and directly useful nature. Teachers 
of English may be placed on the free mailing-list by 
sending their names to Professor H. G. Paul, Urbana, 
Illinois. 

A similar bulletin, the Leaflet of the New England 
Association of Teachers of English, is published 
monthly during the school year. The subscription 
is a dollar a year. Address The Editor, Newton, 
Mass. 

DISCIPLINE 

Perhaps you are thinking: "Yes, yes, but what 
about the actual details of the first five minutes and 
the first week ? ' ' Unless you are unusually fortunate 
you will be dealing more with discipline than with 
the beauties of Evangeline. Petty disorders or con- 
certed botherations will distract you. Advice about 
handling these would be as futile as directions to 
parents about punishing children. But handle them. 
Remember that the individuals before you in the 
classroom are normally decent human beings, as in- 
dividuals. As a body they may be demons. Be pre- 
pared for this. An even temper (or a savage one), 
hitting the other fellow first (or turning your un- 
smitten cheek) — whatever your method is, go out for 
good order. Dismiss esthetics until the ground is 
ready for the seed. 



254 WHAT IS ENGLISH? 

Discipline is the exercise of personality; hence no 
person can advise another about it or analyze his 
own methods or follow his own analysis. The only 
hint I ever got that helped much was this: "You 
are not contending against a crowd, but against in- 
dividuals. Only as you get acquainted with individ- 
uals, make individuals respond, can you handle the 
crowd. ' ' All good discipline comes from the display 
of strength, which may be manifested by a quiet 
serenity or by a cruel sarcasm or by humorous inti- 
macy—or in a dozen other ways. Whatever the ex- 
pression, strength is the fact. A teacher who scolds 
is weak; one who argues is weak; it is weakness to 
threaten what you will do "if"; it is always a weak- 
ness to lose self-control, or to talk angrily; it is ut- 
terly weak to plead for good order. 

Beware of being led into talking. Pupils love 
nothing better than to raise questions for the sake 
of killing time and amusing themselves. In no way 
is a teacher so easily fooled as by that hope that he 
is charming a class with a dissertation. Ten to one 
he is duped by some clever boy who doesn't know 
the lesson. 

A WORD ABOUT DISCOURAGEMENT 

In Milton's outline of school studies he proposes 
that Italian should be mastered in those odd mo- 
ments not otherwise provided for. If one who has 
himself done a little teaching can be guilty of such 
sublime nonsense, what may you not expect to have 
urged upon you who teach "only English"? 

I have heard a man describe how he taught his 
wife and daughter to swim before they went into 
the water. I am not joking; neither was he. If such 



ODDS AND ENDS 255 

a prodigy of tuition is reported, how ready will the 
world be to declare that you are an inefficient teacher 
of " just English." 

The country is full of the records of wonderful 
results in mother-tongue instruction. Shall we waste 
in despair — you and I, the mediocre ones ? Not until 
pedagogy is so developed that Italian is taught inci- 
dentally and swimming is learned by sprawling half 
an hour in the sand. 

The world loves to wave before us these Miltonic 
dazzlements, to shame us with tales of English Edens 
newly made over there at the end of the rainbow by 
some god-like teacher. But if discouragement comes 
from hearing of lofty deeds of education, think of 
King Arthur. When the light and lazy Gawaine 
proposed the quest of the Holy Grail, it was the king 
who inveighed against the splendid undertaking. On 
what ground? He granted the holiness of the proj- 
ect, but protested that it would ruin Camelot and 
restore paganism. His prophecy was fulfilled. It 
applies in fulness of wisdom to us knights of the 
Table Round of English. Our vows should not bind 
us to "follow wandering fires," but by plain tasks 
of knighthood to preserve Camelot. 






INDEX 



Accuracy 

of French boys, 12, 13 
difficulty of securing, 17, 19 
not compared with charm, 19 
demanded in American Univer- 
sities, 17, 21, 22, 193 
demanded by business men, 26 
demanded at Harvard, 115 
in themes, 192 
essential, 255 

Adjectives, 89, 107 

Adverbs, 82, 90, 92, 101 

Aldus, 133 

Alright, 45, 46, 69 

Annotations, 241 

Appreciation, 20, 23 

Bigelow's Manual, 122, 178 
Brown, R. W., 12 

Capitalizing, 70, 217 
Classics, see Reading 
Clauses 

importance of, 80, 86, 91 

teaching of, 91 

noun, 112, 114, 149 

relative, 89, 106 (and see Rela- 
tives) 

restrictive or not, 124, 166-172 
College-entrance requirements, 27, 

74 
Colon, 132, 175, 187 
Comma 

nature of, 128-142 

defined, 137 



with parentheses, 178 

with dashes, 180 

and see Sentence-error 
Comma blunder, see Sentence- 
error 
Composition 

the objective in France, 14 

defined, 20 

subject of this book, 26 

separate college requirement, 27 
Compound words, 70 
Conjugations, 108 
Conjunctions, 82, 91, 92, 101, 111, 

112, 159, 174 
Connectives, 82, and see Conjunc- 
tions, Adverbs 
Cook and O 'Shea, 37 

Dash, 179-183, 188 
' ' Demons ' ' of spelling, 39, 49 
Dictation of spelling, 71 
Diction, 33, 96, 216, 244, 251 
Diagraming, 112-114 
Discipline, 253 
Discouragement, 254 
Biscribe, 37, 41 
Bue to, 217 

ei, 47 

Ellipses, 84, 87 

English 

variety of subjects, 11, 24 
proportion of novice teachers, 

11 
compared with mathematics, 15 



257 



258 



WHAT IS ENGLISH? 



English 

facts of practice, 16 

changing conception of, 17, 20 

teacher in different' relation to 

pupils, 31, 98 
compared with arts, 203 
English Journal, 18, 49, 121, 252 
Essentials, see Accuracy- 
Exercises 

important in grammar, 93, 99 
important in rhetoric, 246 
not altogether on topic, 93 
Experience, this book based on, 12 

France, method with mother- 
tongue, 12-14 

Gender, 86 
Gerund, 92 
Grammar 

function, Chap. IV 

teaching, Chap. V 

in France, 13 

for college entrance, 27, 74 

compared with arts, 74 

Newman's estimate, 76 

as basis for other languages, 76 

nomenclature, 76 

for composition, 77, 79, 81, 83, 
84, 87, 113 

horrors of, 77 

false emphasis, 77, 78, 85, 113 

clauses, see Clauses 

relatives, see Kelatives 

dread of, 82, 84 

classification by function, 85, 
100 

Latin models, 85 

classification of forms, 86 

parts of speech, 87-92, 98-111 

nouns, 88, 102-104, 112 



pronouns, 88, 99, 104 
adjectives, 89, 107 
adverbs, 90, 101 
verbs, 90, 108, 109 
prepositions, 90, 101, 107, 111 
conjunctions, see Conjunctions 
adverbs not conjunctions, 92 
verbals, 92, 98, 99, 103, 109, 

110, 111 
exercises, 93, 99 
not literary selections, 93 
' ' small ' ' value, 94 
compared with algebra, 95 
futility of arguing about, 96 
manuals for, 97 
schematizing, 98, 99 
order of topics, 98, 102 
transitive and intransitive, see 

Transitive 
subject of verb, 103 
subject of infinitive, 110 
conjugations, 108 
mood, 90, 108 
phrases, 111 
diagraming, 112-114 

Habits, power of bad, 32 

Hall, J. L., 34 

Harvard, 20, 21, 116 

Hillegas scale, 190 

History of literature, 233, 248 

How the French Boy Learns to 

Write, 12 
Hyphens, 68, 70 

ie, 47 

Ignorance of teachers, 97, 252 
Illinois Association Bulletin, 253 
Illinois University, 17 (3), 73, 

191 
Infinitives, 92, 110, 111 



INDEX 



259 



Inspiring pupils, 76, 218, 221, 238 
Intransitive, see Transitive 
Introducing words, 176, 181 
It, 104, 112 

Jones, W. F., 38 

Latin models for English gram- 
mar, 85 

Leonard, S. A., 198 

Literary atmosphere of textbooks, 
16 ■ 

Literary models for themes, 28, 
196, 248 

Literary motive in France, 13 

Literary selections for grammar, 
93 

Literature 

relative importance, 25, 27 
history of, 248 * 
see Beading 

Lounsbury, T. E., 33 

Macaulay misspelled, 49, 63 

Manutius, 133 

Maps, 242 

Mechanics, 10, 21, 30, 76, 77, and 
see Accuracy 

Memorizing, 250 

Meredith, 19 

Misspellings 

lists of common, 38-40, 43, 49-61 
different degrees of, 63, 200 
on themes, 202 

Mood, 90, 108 

Near-by, 217 

New England Association Leaf-. 

let, 253 
Newman, 76 
Notes, 241 
Nouns, 88, 102-104, 112 



Novice teacher, 10, 11, 31 

Oral Composition, 26 
Outlines in themes, 195, 208 

Paragraphing, 210 

Parentheses, 177 

Participles, 92, 98, 111, 165 

Parts of speech 
classified, 85, 86 
defined, 87 
order of attack, 99 

Pedagogy, experts in, 10 

Periodicals for teachers, 252, 253 

Phrases, 87, 111, 164 

Poe, 199 

Possessives, 61 

Prepositions, 90, 101, 107, 111 

Princeton, 18 

Printing, early, 134 

Pronouns, 88, 89, 99, 104, and see 
Eelatives 

Pronunciation, 251 

Punctuation 
in France, 13 
importance of, Chap. VI 
nature of, Chap. VII 
code of, Chap. VIII 
conspectus of rules, 185-188 
recent emphasis in textbooks, 

117 
causes good sentences, 116, 117, 

127 
ignorance of, in textbooks, 117- 

122 
sources of rules, 122 
concreteness in teaching, 126 
"intrinsic" character of, 130 
antiquity of, 133-135 
"pause" theory, 135-137 
function of comma, 137-139 
nature of rules, 139, 150, 156 



26a 



WHAT IS ENGLISH? 



Punctuation 

by individual taste, 140, 142 
a social custom, 142-144 
basis of usage, 144-150 
determined by publishers, 146 
code in periodicals, 148 
horrors of, 151 
brings freedom, 152 
authorities, 136, 154 
manuals, 155 

possibility of complete code, 156 
exclamation mark, 157 
comma, 158-172, 185-187 
semicolon, 157, 159, 172, 180, 
181, 187, and see Sentence- 
error 
colon, 175, 187 
quotation marks, 176 
parentheses, 177, 183, 188 
dashes, 179, 183, 188 
at beginning of a line, 184 
puzzles, 184 

"open" and "close," 184 
the few important matters, 184, 
215 

Eeading 

nature of, 219 

classics, 221, 229-238, 252 

inspiring a love of, 221, 238 

what pupils enjoy, 226 

love of by teachers, 228 

importance, 229 

as education, 230, 235, 237 

history of literature, 233, 248 

lack of power to read, 235, 238, 

240 
social approval, 235 
facts of lesson, 238 
tests, 239 
not critical attack, 240 



annotations, 241 

supplementary, 242 

choosing books, 242 
Reading aloud, 240 
Relatives, 80, 89, 105, 106, 107, 

169 
Restrictive and non-restrictive, 

166-172 
Rhetoric, 244 " 

need of exercises, 245 

figures of speech, 246 

vocabulary, 247 

errors in literature, 248 

models, 248 
Rudiments, see Accuracy 

Semicolon, 157, 159, 172, 180, 181, 

187, and see Sentence-error 
Self-expression, 20 
Sentence 

in French teaching, 13 
importance, 28, 30 
improved by punctuation, 116- 
118 
Sentence-error, 79, 81, 83, 87, 92, 
121, 151, 159, 173-175, 213, 
216 
Sentence-sense, see Sentence-error 
Seperate, 37, 41 
Shall and will, 17, 77, 78, 216, 

244, 245 
Shepherd, 43 
Simplified spelling, 70 
' ' Since ' ' story, 72 
Social approval, 197, 218, 235 
Spacing words, 217 
Spelling 
nature of difficulty, 36 
visual, 36 

number of words to be studied, 
37-41 



INDEX 



261 



Spelling 

"demons," 39 

second-grade words in high 
school, 40 

in the grades, 38-40 

overcoming wrong habits, 40, 
41, 43 

confusion, 43, 68 

intensive, 44, 63, 64 

similar forms together, 45,46,61 

proper names, 49 

emphasis in proportion to com- 
monness, 49, 62 

list of words most commonly 
misspelled in high school, 49- 
61 

possessives, 61 

three kinds of misspellings, 63 

dignity of, 64 

principles, 64 

rules, 65-70 

by sound, 65, 69 

not showing wrong forms, 70 

compounds, 70 

rules lacking, 70 

simplified, 70 

grading of tests, 71 

dictation, 71 

correcting by pupil, 72 

difficulty of teaching, 72 

importance of at Illinois and 
Yale, 73 
Stoddard, 199 
Stoped, 41, 64, 65 
Style in themes, 23 
Subjects of verbs, 103 



Subjects of infinitives, 110 
Subjunctive, 108 

Talking too much, 240, 254 
Tests, written, 239, 250 
Textbooks, ignorance in, 35, 96, 

117, 122 
Themes 

drafts, 16, 35, 209, 218 

lack of uniformity in grading, 
189 

literary criterion, 190, 192, 196 

accuracy criterion, 192 

mechanical grading, 193, 198, 
199-204, 212, 214 

outlines, 195, 208 

orderly thinking, 194, 201, 204 

interesting, 197, 198, 204 

social approval, 197 

topics, 204, 208 

concreteness in directions for 
205, 209, 212 

kinds of, 206 

introduction and conclusion, 
208 
There and their, 42 
To for too, 42, 200 
Transitive, 85, 88, 90, 102, 107 

Verbs, 90, 108, 109 
Vocabulary, 247 

Whittier, 219 
Wilson, John, 122-125 
Wisconsin, 17 (4), 191 

Yale, 73 



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